Coming into the Country

"Coming into the Country" is a classic that every visitor to Alaska should read. But the first two sections can be skipped by most people. Section one, "The Encircled River" is about the Kobruk River, and section two, "What they Were Hunting For" is a funny tale of the defunct effort to establish a new Alaskan capital city. Section three, titled "Coming into the Country" describes the people and region of Eagle, population 100 plus a loose scattering of rural homesteaders. The time is the late 1970s when Alaskan lands are being divided up into national parks, native american, state, federal and private lands. McPhee seems to have interviewed about everybody in Eagle to get a cross section of views -- most of them anti-government and libertarian. He probes deep into the Alaska psyche by simply recording what people told him. What of the homesteaders? I admire their individuality and hardiness -- but their bulldozers and airplanes seem incompatible with living simply in the woods. Someone once said that the greatest boon to homesteaders was food stamps; thus their lifestyle is more than a bit artificial and dependent upon there being very few people inhabiting large areas of land. On the other hand, do the "posey sniffers" (as they call environmentalists) have the right to dictate to Alaskans how they conduct themselves and what they do with their land? Would New Yorkers on Fifth Avenue resent Alaskan advice on the management of Central Park? The struggle between the environmentalists and the Alaskans continues to this day. In the little town of Wrangell last summer, the Greenpeace ship "Arctic Sunrise" paid a call and was promptly slapped with a summons for violating environmental laws. Greenpeace fled the scene, but was convicted of failing to have an "oil spill prevention plan," which seems a serious omission by an outfit that protests oil spills for a vocation. I'd like to see an update of McPhee's book. What's happened to the homesteaders he interviewed? I suspect that most of them have long since abandoned their cabins and returned to civilization, possibly to be replaced by a new group seeking the solace in the wilderness that is the goal of both homesteaders and posey sniffers, each in his own way. This is a good book of objective reporting which both groups can enjoy. Smallchief

In the late 1970's my mother and father were inspired by John McPhee's Coming Into the Country to the point of venturing out onto the open highway. I was but two years old, headed across America, from Georgia to Alaska, towards Eagle, the tiny community that McPhee discusses with a keen eye in the third section of his book. I spent my childhood in that community and it would not be until I was fully grown that I would actually read his book. Just a couple of years ago, when I was attending college in Georgia, I became homesick for Alaska and decided to read the book that had been so impressive to my parents. I was amazed by McPhee's way of seeing the truth in something foreign to him -- how he described the people of Eagle. I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to venture into the land of Alaska, whether in their actual travels or in their imagination.

Again and again we hear it, but it's true: John McPhee can interest a reader in anything. He manages to combine a richly sedimented prose, which frequently rises to a level of virtuosity of which 95% of novelists would be envious, with a tangible involvement in the activities of the people he writes about. And he does always write, first and foremost, about people. 'Coming into the Country' is McPhee's longest single book and contains about ten capsule biographies (and quite a bit of modest autobiography, too) in addition to observations on the hibernation of bears, the various techniques of panning for gold, the advantages of sled-dogs against snow-machines, the failings of bush-pilots, and three-dozen other disquisitions.Without wishing to carp, I do think that the book is a shade too long -- the final section 'Coming into the Country' could profitably have been pruned of about forty pages -- but the greater length does allow the reader to see the effort McPhee goes to to provide his stories with an aesthetically pleasing structure. The first section, 'The Encircled River' deposits us, in medias res, halfway down a tributary of one of Alaska's northenmost rivers. McPhee and his companions travel downriver to the confluence of a larger river, and then we head back to the headwaters of the earlier river -- the story describes an encircling pattern. The second part 'What they were looking for' is a very funny record of a helicopter trip taken by a committee established to decide on a new capital for Alaska. Here the story skips around the theme as the chopper skips around proposed sites for the new metropolis. It's in the final section which gives the book its title that McPhee really lets loose, leaping from the present to the past, from those living on the river to those encamped in the small town of Eagle, back to the Indian village, on to a white mountain trapper and his Indian wife, back to the first goldrush era in the Yukon valley, all the time incorporating off-the-record views of Eagle townspeople, journal entries, his own observations of the breathtaking landscape. It's a tour-de-force. McPhee is the best journalist in the English-speaking world. Alaska is a wonderful place. The meeting of the two is something to behold.

Lots of writers have tried to convey Alaska to non-Alaskans. Few have succeeded. Those who have are the ones who have chosen to illustrate small parts of the larger whole, and selected the right parts. Margaret Murie comes to mind. But 16 years on, Coming Into the Country is still the best. I own and have read everything McPhee has written. I subscribe to New Yorker mostly for the annual or biennial piece by McPhee. I like the geology series very much, and parts of Birch Bark Canoe still make me laugh out loud, but Country is his best book.McPhee's many gifts including finding and understanding interesting, compelling people, and writing about them eloquently and non-judgmentally. He uses those people and what they say to convey his larger themes. Stan Gelvin and his dad, Willie Hensley and, of course, the folks in and around Eagle. He somehow wrangled a seat on the state capital relocation committee's helicopter. He somehow charmed the irascible Joe Vogler into candor. I talked with Vogler - who has since been murdered in a gun deal gone bad - about McPhee's interview, and he told me that McPhee took no notes during interviews over a week, and yet "pretty much got it right." I've lived in Alaska most of my life. I've read the gushy stuff (Michener, for example), the political diatribes (Joe McGinnis, for example), and the gee-whiz tourist fodder. McPhee, instead of trying to paint the whole state, paints a series of miniatures which give you a much accurate glimpse than the writers and hacks who try to "describe" Alaska. Maybe it's that America's best non-fiction writer brought his special tools and skills to the right opportunities; maybe it's just luck. It all came together in this book. The last bit, his walk down to the river and the growing worry, verging on panic, that this is wilderness, that a bear could be around the next corner, that he is not in control and can never be in control; the eloquence and the message are what makes Alaska. No one has described it better. If you want to try to understand Alaska, its people, its politics and why I live here, this book is the best place to start. This book is a great writer's greatest book.

John McPhee is a writer who seems able to interest readers in anything that captures his attention. The range of subjects that his books cover is striking and his skill at involving readers in subjects that they might heretofore have thought uninteresting is, in my opinion, unique. This book, recounting a journey through Alaska - as a pretext for broader commentary about Alaska and its relationship with the lower 48 - is an excellent introduction to the state we only think we know. I read this during a long stretch of living and working in Alaska and found it to be the most insightful and interesting book on the subject that I had found. As is true with all of McPhee's books, this one satisfys on many levels, from the clarity of the prose to the fascinating subject matter. Great stuff.