Abbey recounts a story of his visit to the village of Havasu, fifteen years before his gig as an Arches park ranger. He had learned of the village by accident, stopping by the Grand Canyon on his way to Los Angeles with some college friends. Drawn by curiosity, young Abbey walked the fourteen-mile trail down the canyon into Havasu, as his friends proceeded to Los Angeles without him.

Abbey wound up staying five weeks in this Indian village. He spends his first night in a lodge for tourists there, but then decamps to the ruins of an old mining camp where he “lived, mostly alone except for ghosts, for the next thirty-five days” (247).

Abbey kept mostly to himself during this sojourn, doing “mostly nothing” but catching an occasional rainbow trout and walking into the main part of the village about once a week to buy food. He participated in the Great Havsupai Sacred Peach Festival and Four-Day Marathon Friendship Dance, and briefly befriended a few of the villagers, including a colorful character named Spoonhead.

One day, Abbey went for a long, exploratory walk and then realized that if he went back the way he came, he would not make it back to his camp before nightfall.