Car Camping: The Book of Desert Adventures - Softcover

Sundeen, Mark

3.63

150 ratings by Goodreads

9780688174606: Car Camping: The Book of Desert Adventures

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0688174604 ISBN 13: 9780688174606

Publisher: Quill, 2000

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Existential essays set in the Southwest about half in Moab, Utah. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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Review:

Warning: Mark Sundeen's collection of desert adventures is not a guidebook. In fact, you're better off not trying to follow his lead in rafting Colorado's Arkansas River, camping in Rio Grande Gorge's no-camping area, or defecating over the rim of the Grand Canyon. But those hankering to get a handle on the New West will be intrigued by these episodic tales that unfold like the varying yet connected pitches on a colorful redrock climb. The narrator is a young itinerant house painter trying to figure out what is--and what is not--important in the world. His cousin and mentor Donny Brown confuses matters by preaching that the only important thing is the Right Now. Together they take off to see the splendors of the Southwest because in the desert "things are enormous and you can get on them." But soon the realities of Donny Brown's failing marriage interrupt the trip, and the narrator continues on alone, meeting odd pilgrims and misfits as he drifts from place to place. He reasons that it's easy to live in the Right Now if you're a rock star or independently wealthy; otherwise people think you're a poseur trying on hats.

If you don't have enough money to buy whatever you want, it's hard to prove that you are Yourself. And if you don't get money from your parents or a trust fund then you have to get a job, and then everyone can see that you're not really Yourself but some conformist instead.

Sundeen's voice, a sort of wise-kernel-of-truth-wrapped-in-a-shell-of-young-naivete, can be a bit cloying, especially amidst all the winking and nodding, but the evocation of youthful discovery is touching and even poetic at times as he meanders through a desiccated land of hobos, river guides, and spiritual seekers. Along the way the absurdities of the American West (the impoundment on the Colorado River named after John Wesley Powell, for instance) pile up like so much cow dung on a campfire. "A lot of people from big cities are moving into spiritual towns like Sedona and Telluride," the narrator observes,

where they can be Themself and get in touch with the Earth. A good spiritual town should have some Indians within 100 miles and good skiing or mountain biking within ten. The stores should sell turquoise bracelets and cappuccino, and there has to be a place to hook up a modem.

By the end of the journey through such scattered settlements you've learned a lot about the people who conquered the West and even more about their unlikely heirs. --Langdon Cook

About the Author:

Mark Sundeen was born in 1970 in Harbor City, CA. He is co-founder, contributor, and managing editor of the ‘zine Great God Pan. This is his first book. He now lives in Utah.

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