I didn't always do so much walking out on the Cabeza Prieta. My first trips out there, beginning in the late sixties, were made in the usual fashion, driving a pickup across the Devil's Highway or easing a jeep up the sandy tracks of the spur roads. Most of these trips and ninety percent of my several dozen non-solo visits to the Cabeza Prieta were taken with two closefriends named Ed: Ed Gage and Ed Abbey.
Later, when truck camping seemed tame and I needed a bit of adventure in my life, I decided to try to walk across the Cabeza Prieta alone, covering 120 to 165 miles, depending on the route I took. Taking it easy, I usually make the trip in about eleven days, ten nights.
Read more about the Cabeza Prieta in The Bombing Range from Walking It Off
"Counting Sheep" is a testimony to my own dead and a celebration of the most impostant thing Ed Abbey and I ever shared: The vast desert wilderness of the Cabeza Prieta.
Counting Sheep
Gary Paul Nabhan (University of Arizona Press, 1993)
Download a pdf (2.8mb) or read online