The general argument/point made by Edward Abbey in his work Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National
Park is that wilderness is a necessary part of civilization and that’s it’s
national parks’ job to keep it intact and undiminished but people are making
that impossible to do by trying to change the wilderness experience. More
specifically, Abbey argues/suggests that wilderness is being destroyed by
people’s desire for roadways, electricity, and comfort everywhere they go. He
writes, most readiness, while generally sympathetic to this latter point of
view, will feel as do the administrators of the National Park Service, that
although wilderness is a fine thing, certain compromise and adjustments are
necessary in the order to meet the ever-expanding demand for outdoor recreation
(pg. 387). In this passage, Abbey is suggesting that the idea of outdoor
recreation has changed; it can’t be sleeping under the stars, walking on foot,
and living off the land, it now has to be motorhomes, restaurants, and constant
modern entertainment. In conclusion, it is Abbey’s beliefs that no more roads
should be built in National Parks because it is ruining the true meaning and
opportunity of the wilderness.
In my view, Abbey is right because
National Parks and wilderness everywhere are getting destroyed by the
convenience of roads and groups of people. For example, the parkway by my
house, originally created for a quiet, clean, and peaceful place to be alone in
nature and run or walk your dog is now, loud, always busy, and full of trash. Although Abbey might object to the idea of finding a happy medium between
comfort and pure wilderness, I maintain that it’s possible to have comfort and
a full wilderness experience with maybe a control of tourism and stricter
wilderness laws. Therefore I conclude that Edward Abbey is right in wanting to
keep wilderness, wilderness but he has too high expectations for everyone to
want the same experience as him so a compromise needs to be made. 
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