Tucson Weekly: Room With A View (March 12

Atascosa Peak Boasts A Unique Memorial To A Genuine American Curmudgeon.
By Kevin Franklin
THE WORLD HAS its great monuments dedicated to dead people of note: the Pyramids, Mount Rushmore, etc. But my personal favorite is the Ed Abbey Memorial Shithouse.
Perched on a cliff 6,200 feet in the air, the open-door convenience has a 100-mile view across the Pajarito Mountains and into Mexico. It's the throne of the gods. And at this point in time, it's on the verge of tumbling off the cliff in an avalanche of splintering plywood and tumbling rocks.
Review Hiking guru Luke Evans and I have just finished climbing Atascosa Peak, 13 miles northwest of Nogales. The peak is capped with an old fire tower and the listing outhouse.
Ed Abbey spent a better part of the summer of 1968 here--theoretically watching for fires but more likely focusing his attention on enjoying the wilderness of his surroundings. Abbey, of course, is one of the Southwest's greatest authors and one of the original champions of nature for nature's sake as opposed to man's amusement. He wrote, among other works, Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang. He also helped launch the Earth First! movement.
In Confessions Of A Barbarian, David Petersen has compiled Abbey's journal entries. About his home on the mountaintop, Abbey writes, "This lookout is merely a flimsy old frame shack perched like an eagle's nest on a pinnacle of rock 6,235 feet high. Built in the 1930s by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), of course. Held together by paint and wire and nuts and bolts. Shudders in the wind."
Nothing much has changed on the peak. The door has come off the fire tower, and nobody keeps watch any longer in the summer--but the shack still shudders and the paint continues to peel. Abbey fled to a number of fire towers around the Southwest in order to escape the oppression he felt in city life. He also wrote in places like this:

A great grimy sunset glowers on the west. Plains of gold, veils of dust, wind-whipped clouds. The big aching tooth of Baboquivari far and high on the skyline. (June 5, 1968)...Woke up this morning on an island in the sky, surrounded by clouds. Wild swirling banks of vapor, flowing and passing to reveal brief glimpses of rocky crags, dripping trees, the golden grassy hillsides far below. (July 5, 1968)

Most folks who were alive when Robert Kennedy was shot remember where they were. Abbey was on Atascosa Peak, and made note of it in his journal.
I find myself looking at the benchmarks cemented into place long before Abbey spent his summer here. I realize that by reading the engraved metal, I'm likely standing in the same place with the same posture as Abbey did when he read this same benchmark. I also realize this "Washington slept here" nostalgia is probably just the kind of crap that would piss off a curmudgeon like Abbey.
So we abandon reverie and set about making ourselves useful. Various groups are working to restore the fire tower, but the forlorn outhouse seems to have no friends. Fortunately, it also has no users, making it a tolerable working environment--as far as outhouses go.
Luke steps in the decaying structure and it lists a bit. We shore up the foundation before anyone partakes of the view from the throne. It seems a good course of action, if for no other reason than that I can't imagine what I'd say to Luke's folks if he tumbled off the cliff, his jeans around his ankles.
We rework the supports and tighten the guide wires securing the commode to the mountainside. It's not a bad job, considering our only tools are bare hands and a few rocks. Next time we come we'll bring a bucket of paint and a Magic Marker for a fitting epitaph: "Ed was here."
I don't know if the outhouse was even standing when Abbey spent his time on Atascosa Peak, but it doesn't matter. If he would approve of any structure built in his memory, I bet he'd think of this outhouse as a suitable tribute to the life of a barbarian. After all, being in the outhouse entails taking a dump on something man-made while taking a view of open country as far as the eye can see.
Next Week: Get lost in Nevada, on the loneliest highway in America!

Getting There:

Take the Nogales-Ruby Road just over 12 miles west from I-19. Look for large dirt parking area and Forest Service trail marker 100. The hike is an easy 2 1/2 miles.

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