What is the central idea (thesis) of Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey?

In writing
, Abbey places his work alongside other major texts of the environmental
literature movement. Most important is Henry David Thoreau's Walden,
published in 1854, which documents that writer's experience living in voluntary poverty in a
small, remote cabin. Like Thoreau, Abbey is both humorous and cantankerous, with a wide-ranging
intellect. The stories in Desert Solitaire describe adventures during his
time in the canyonlands, and he argues for the fragility of nature, man's requisite humility
when approaching wildness, and his affinity for rural life and self-sustainability.

Abbey documents the steady and nefarious creep of civilization into the wilderness,
which he lampoons in "Havasu," noting how the local natives have decided against
allowing the Department of the Interior to bulldoze a road right up to their spectacular
waterfalls. There is value in being remote, in being hard to reach, suggests Abbey. Easy access
is not always a good thing.

In his...