Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang opened with a definition:
sabotage … n. [Fr. < sabot, wooden shoe + -age: from damage done to machinery by sabots]….
From this subtle introduction, the book grew beyond its covers, even beyond the reach of its cantankerous author, and led a whole generation of upset desert rats to replace sabots with a different tool, introducing a new definition into the vernacular of Western environmental activism:
monkey-wrench … v. [Am. < monkey wrench, adjustable wrench with large jaws] to prevent, delay, or sabotage industrialization or development, esp. through vandalism ….
While Glen Canyon Dam remains standing despite Abbey’s blueprint for its destruction, many credit the book with inspiring other acts of civil disobedience: radical environmental group Earth First!’s tree sits, Earth Liberation Front’s guerilla property destruction, and most recently Tim DeChristopher’s sabotage of a Bureau of Land Management sale of oil and gas leases in Utah’s backcountry. Now an in-the-works documentary – “Lines Across the Sand” – will bring these monkeywrenchers to the screen alongside Abbey’s real life companions – including Doug Peacock, Ken Sleight, and Ingrid Eisenstadter – who inspired Monkey Wrench Gang characters George Washington Hayduke, Seldom Seen Smith, and Bonnie Abbzug.
Abbey once said, “Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while, a layer of scum floats to the top.” This film doesn’t monkeywrench per se, but, like Abbey’s books, it does stir the stew in its own way, blending humor and outrage in the wild desert to make a “call to action — the Earth needs defenders,” says filmmaker M.L. Lincoln. Lincoln’s 2007 award-winning short film “Drowning River” documented the flooding of Glen Canyon. “When they drowned that place, they drowned my whole guts,” protest songwriter Katie Lee, who appears in both films, has said of the canyon. “I will never forgive the bastards. Never. May they rot in hell.”
Set for release later this year, “Lines Across the Sand” gives a voice to activists for wild lands protection.
Would Abbey watch this film if he were still alive? Perhaps, but he’d likely follow Seldom Seen’s example afterward:
A tactful man, Smith withdrew when the movie was over, went out into the desert with his truck and bedroll, slept under the stars, on the sand with the tarantulas and sidewinders for company…
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