"Hell, yes." On McPhee's moves

Well, I came of intellectual age dissecting the exact sort of confrontation McPhee sets up Archdruid and in many of his other books. The conservationist vs. the commissioner (or insert any other, generally federal--or worse, state (especially if a western state)--gov't official) trope is one I've studied, recreated, stumbled into unknowingly while studying wolves on the New Mexico/Arizona border, counting birds in Wyoming, and--god forbid--looking at alpine flowers in Alaska. I knew of Brower before I did McPhee, but that's sort of my former life, so to see McPhee make caricatures of both sides made me smile. He does so sweetly, endearing us to Brower and each of the three "villains." I love seeing Brower presented as this sort of dopey, butterfly-catching, statistic-inventing, perhaps slightly unaware "druid," but McPhee does us the favor of complicating his character by juxtaposing Brower's staunch conservationism with his befuddling acceptance of some of Fraser's plans.

I've started slightly off topic, but let me transition by saying that I found some of the conversation happening between Brower and Park up in the Cascades a little forced. It felt transcribed, as though McPhee was dubbing all the lines from the conservationist's or prospector's handbook over the generally mundane conversations people tend to have while hiking. Granted, Park and Brower aren't your everyday Joe and maybe they do wax idealistic up in the mountains, but it felt unnatural to see each sermonizing endlessly, saying all the things we need to know in order to understand where each is coming from. My favorite scene from that first section is when they're all tired and pulling copper-laced pebbles from the stream bed. Even the blueberry scene towards the end felt a little forced--of course, Brower's the type to load up his cup and save his berries for "the future," whereas Park's just going to get it while the eating's good.

But. I suppose this is done for a reason, to initiate the reader into the simplest of scenarios where we can get Brower in full blast, his most iconic personality, that can later be broken down into a more nuanced and complicated persona. What's not predictable about Archdruid is its three-part form. It feel strange to leave Park and then Fraser behind, but in the end I'm grateful to do so because for each scenario to go on would become exhausting, or come to an I-get-it-already point. Through Brower's three different excursions, we get a slightly different scenario, and therefore an incrementally more complicated look at environmental and development issues in the United States in the era of the birth of the Earth Day movement (which started the year before this book was first published).

Writerly speaking, I see McPhee making moves in the second and third sections that are much more wow than what I saw in the first part:


WAITING FOR HIS SUBJECTS TO FALL ASLEEP: McPhee takes advantage of this pause in the events to shift into a flashback or to philosophize for a minute. After Brower, McPhee and Fraser retire to their 1500 dollar tents, we have a space break on page 126 where McPhee talks about how "sleep was not all that easy" because of how the bunks rolled up and down. Then we sort of get a McPhee lying awake in bed thinking about the day sort of scenario. He reflects on what Fraser had said--"A beach is for children," how Brower is also "reverent toward the young" (127). We drift into the background of Fraser for 2-3 pages, which shifts into some anecdotes from his wife. Then we get Brower's wife (131), then we are lead back into the theme of the book--this time regarding the issue of the Valley of the Mineral King. On 134 we are left with a Browerism: "Told he was being almost poetically impractical [regarding how Disney should build a tunnel or fly people to the proposed ski resort], Brower responded that the Disney people were going to change something forever, so they could amortize the changes over a thousand years." And then McPhee brings us swiftly back to the moment: "Fraser rolled over and sighed in his sleep. I wondered if in the day to follow he would find that Brower's apparent tolerance for the development of Cumberland Island was equally tied in string" (134). It seems almost gimmicky, but the territory that McPhee's able to cover in those few pages make the move swift and fluid. He wanders with purpose, and he brings us back with purpose.

THE RANT PUNCTUATED BY THE QUICK QUESTION: Pages 172-174, when McPhee meets Dominy. We get Dominy's 2-page long self-aggrandizing rant about "The unregulated Colorado [being] a son of a bitch." Then we can sense McPhee mousily jumping into the first opening he can to cut to the chase and ask if Dominy would go down the Colorado in a rubber raft with Brower, and we get Dominy, never missing a beat, replying, "Hell, yes." The long rant, which could have been cut, compressed, or summarized, serves to 1. let us know about Dominy, 2. let us know his/their side of the debate, and 3. allow McPhee to move the plot forward.

THE FAST CUT TO SPEED UP TIME: In the rafting section the tense is switched to present, and we get what I think is a much more lyrical rendition of events. I get the sense McPhee is trying to illustrate how "There is a sense of acceleration in the last fifty yards," and that, "There is something quite deceptive in the sense of acceleration that comes just before a rapid." We spend much more time seeing nature and the river (I love this description: "Tents of water form overhead, to break apart in rags" [182].). It's much more about the experience, and even, I think, about McPhee's experience. He does this weird thing throughout this section where he moves back and forth in time. For instance, from 185 to 186, at one moment we are wandering through a canyon with Brower, McPhee, and Dominy, Brower picking up an old beer can. Then suddenly in the next paragraph we're catapulted to dinnertime, "Inside Dominy's big leather briefcase is a bottle of Jim Beam, and now, at the campsite, in the twilight..." that little "now" being the orienting clincher. On 183 we get a similar leap forward: "The river is a shadow, and we have stopped for the night where a waterfall arcs out from a sandstone cliff." The three are now assessing the waterfall, and although we have just leaped forward in time, McPhee still pauses to give us a little flashback: "With the raft as a ferry, we crossed the river an hour or so ago and stood in the cool mist where the waterfall whips the air into wind. We went on to climb to the top of the fall..." (184). I'm not sure what to make of these little leaps forward in time. It gives the narrative a much more slipstream feel, no pun--I don't think, anyway--intended.

THE QUINTESSENTIAL EXAMPLE OF USING A JOURNEY THROUGH A LANDSCAPE TO EXPLAIN VAST SWEEPS OF HISTORY IN ORDER TO LEAVE THE READER WITH THE OVERWHELMING FEELING OF HAVING WITNESSED THE PASSAGE OF TIME BACK TO THE VERY ORIGINS: Easiest to do, I guess, when talking about geology. Especially in the Grand Canyon. For example, starting on p. 176 with "This is isolation wilderness...Having seen the canyon from this perspective, I would not much want to experience it any other way. ... The river has worked its way down into the stillness of original time" (177).