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Encounters with the Archdruid

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This was the book that introduced me to John McPhee (I grew up around the corner from Dave Brower)and it made me a lifelong fan of McPhees remarkable insights and abilities as a reporter. Here he takes Brower -probably the leading voice for landscape conservation in the second half of the 20th century- and puts him Up Close and Personal with three very remarkable antagonists: the greatest Dam builder in North America, the developer of Hilton Head, and with a mining engineer who has "an affinity for beds" -but has managed to spend nearly 8 years in total sleeping rough in search of minerals world-wide. What is most intriguing about this book is that one comes away with an appreciation of the complexities surrounding environmental issues. This is no polemic or one-sided rant, rather McPhee shows us the strengths and weaknesses of each of his characters, and by weaving the personal in with the political we are left to make up our own minds just who are the heroes and who the villains. Recently I used this book in an Environmental Lit. class & to my surprise about half of the students had never heard of Brower (hence the title of my review. In spite of this they were all captured by the artful transparency of McPhee's prose -they were on that raft with Dominy & Brower, they went up that mountain, they walked that beach, and most important, they had that conversation. Thirty years after its publication this book still has the zip to draw its reader in. Regardless of your position on Things Environmental, I encourage you to give this a good read.

As the other reviewers here have noted, this is John McPhee's superb recounting of three episodes in the life of famous environmental activist David Brower. The three people he encounters are a geologist, a land developer, and a dam builder. The structure of the book allows a revealing contrast between one of America's greatest environmental activists on three key issues. These are: 1) the desirability and advisability of exploring and mining for ore and minerals in protected wilderness areas, 2) whether it is preferable to develop land on the Atlantic Coast or allow it to be developed, and 3) the desirability of damming major rivers in the Southwest.

My favorite portion of the book featured Brower's encounter with the fascinating Charles Fraser, one of America's greatest and most gifted land developers. At debate was whether to develop Cumberland Island as a recreational and residential area, or whether to leave it wild and protect it as a National Seashore. The editorial reviewer inaccurately stated that Fraser was successful in his goal to develop it. He was not. Today Cumberland Island is a designated National Seashore. Fraser had hoped to develop Cumberland much as he had Hilton Head. What is compelling about Fraser is his desire to develop land on the one hand, with an intent to respect the physical surroundings to the greatest possible degree. Brower himself says in the book that while he is opposed to developing Cumberland Island, if anyone were to develop it, he would want Fraser to be that person.

The section of the book in which Brower and dam builder Floyd Dominy discuss a wide range of issues is fascinating not just in contrasting two fundamentally opposed viewpoints, but in bringing out both Brower's most conspicuous success and failure. The success was his leading the Sierra Club in opposing building a dam in the Grand Canyon. The tragedy was that in focusing on opposing the Grand Canyon, Brower and the Sierra Club were unable to fight the building of the Glen Canyon River Dam, for environmentalists and conservationists perhaps the single greatest tragedy since the building of the Hetch Hetchy Dam early in the 20th century. In building this dam, the ironically named Lake Powell was created. Many environmentalists refer to his as Lake Foul. The irony stems from the fact that it was named in "honor" of John Wesley Powell, who led the first expedition of Europeans to explore the entirety of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Powell was deeply opposed to the development of the American West beyond the ability of the water supply to support the local population. He would, therefore, have been horrified to find such an anti-monument as this lake bearing his name. Edward Abbey's books are filled with vituperative attacks on the devastation wrought by the building of the Glen Canyon River Dam. There are several organizations that continue calling for the draining of Lake Powell.

Why is there so much outrage at this dam? In creating Lake Powell, the water covered some of the most excruciatingly beautiful landscape not only in the United States but the world. Just before the dam was completed and the waters filled the area, photographer Eliot Porter took a number of remarkable photographs chronicling the magnificence of what was lost. Instead of being covered with water, the area should have been declared a national park. The poignancy of the final section of McPhee's book is the since of the tragedy of the dam, and the two who struggled over its building, meet and talk.

A collection of 3 narratives, these are stories of the interactions between David Brower, a militant environmentalist and former head of the Sierra Club, and three of his natural enemies from the worlds of engineering, government, and real estate development. McPhee does a brilliant job of getting the reader into the hearts and minds of these people without taking sides, and you won't look at environmental issues quite the same again. I was especially impressed with McPhee's exploration of Floyd Dominy, a builder of monumental dams and the man behind the notorious Glen Danyon dam. I couldn't put this book down. John McPhee is an amazing writer who has tackled just about every subject. I think it's much easier to shop McPhee in an online setting like Amazon.com than to try to locate him at your local bookstore. He has covered so many topics that no one really knows where to shelve his books, and used book dealers have an especially hard time of it. Southern California readers will enjoy his book "The Control of Nature" if only for his wonderful piece entitled "Los Angeles against the Mountains." You cannot go wrong with John McPhee!

In chemistry, a catalyst is used to mix two substances unlikely to join in nature. John McPhee here acts as a catalyst in stimulating reactions between the Archdruid, David Brower, and three of his antagonists. As a catalyst, McPhee deals with each pairing in the most detached way possible. Even so long after its original publication, the attitudes expressed by the mineral engineer, the dam builder and resort developer through McPhee's superb journalism remain with us. He succeeds admirably at that in relating these confrontations, while his writing skills keep you aware of him at all times. Brower, a towering figure in several senses, is portrayed in an almost subdued manner. The strength of his message, however, so appropriate today, is conveyed by McPhee as a muffled riptide.

Join McPhee as he struggles over copper-bearing mountains with Brower and geologist Charles Park. Park "would move the White House if there was copper under it." To Park, mineral extraction is mandated by the need of Americans to maintain the lifestyle they've achieved in the 20th Century. Brower argues that lifestyle growth must slow its pace to retain the remaining natural resources. Park counters Brower's desire to protect the wilderness with assertions that "managed mining" will achieve both aims. Park argues that mining need not destroy wilderness and that Glacier Peak's hiking trails will not be lost because copper is removed from its innards. Does this sound familiar?

The Archdruid's second encounter is with the rather more flamboyant Charles Fraser. Fraser has a winning track record in development, particularly golf courses. He wants to "open" an island off the Carolina coast. The island, "a third larger than Manhattan, has a population of eleven people." Fraser sees that condition as disproportionate. When Brower disagrees, Fraser dubs him the Archdruid - contending that 'conservationists' are 'preservationists.' "Modern druids worship trees and sacrifice human beings to those trees," Fraser contends. The humans being sacrificed are golfers and others who can afford to visit the offshore island Fraser wants to "develop." Fraser, like Park, understands the need of Americans to return to a remembered uncongested frontier condition, if only temporarily.

The western frontier becomes the site of McPhee's concluding essay. In the West, more than anywhere else in North America, water is life's blood. Whether water is better used in a free flowing or captive condition is the subject of Brower's dispute with Floyd E. Dominy, dam builder. McPhee follows the pair over reservoirs, deep into dams, along river courses, in his account of the "water wars." McPhee describes Dominy as "a child of the hundredth meridian," that boundary between wet and dry Mid-America. Dominy spent years capturing water for ranchers and farmers, later adding cities, casinos and boaters to his clientele. Along the Colorado River, deep in the Grand Canyon, McPhee records Brower and Dominy debating the impact of damming western rivers.

We have lost David Brower. If there's a finer memorial than McPhee's account, point it out. The issues related here aren't resolved today, giving this book an unexpected endurance. John McPhee has performed an incomparable feat in aligning the attitudes and expressions of the "developer" and the "environmentalist." Clear choices are made apparent, but as McPhee reminds us, neither Brower nor his contenders are the ones who will make the decisions - it is you, the reader.

McPhee's skill is in presenting a human drama, with nature as a backdrop. Here, he follows environmental leader David Brower as he interacts with a miner, a developer, and a dam-builder. McPhee tells these stories in an even-handed way, playing up the dialog and letting the conversations and actions tell the story, rather than focus on the issues themselves. It's reasonable to assume that McPhee sympathizes with the environmental perspective beacause of the choice of topics he covers, but he never presents one side more than another.

A particular treat is for readers of Reisner's Cadillac Desert, who learned about an entertainingly bold dam-builder, Floyd Dominy. Here, McPhee places him and David Brower at the scene of Brower's greatest disappointment - a dam that he "allowed" to be built. The results, and the tone of the conversation between them, may be suprising.

For readers who want an introduction to McPhee without the focus of this book, Table of Contents (the title of another book) is a good place to start.

McPhee somehow combines a rigid structure of journalism with some beautiful poetry that flows from each word to the next, like the river he describes at the end of this work. I thought this was an amazing piece of writing; he makes what might seem boring into something provocative and truly meaningful. McPhee cleverly separates himself from taking sides with any of the well-developed, real characters. You can also learn from this book, as McPhee simply presents the material and makes you think the issues over. I recommend this book to all, preservationalists and conservationalists alike. It's such a good book because it seems like anyone can write this at first glance, because it's so fluid, but upon further inspection, you realize that he has perfected an art of journalism blended with poetry ... something I really haven't seen in my lifetime.

What a wonderful book! McPhee gives us both sides of the environmental debate by letting the protagonists discuss the issues.

The real genius behind the book is McPhee's idea of taking David Brower, a leading environmentalist, and his opponents into the wilderness. Brower goes backpacking in the North Cascades with Charles Park, a mining engineer who discusses plans for a copper mine in a protected wilderness area. Brower goes camping on Cumberland Island with Charles Fraser, the developer of nearby Hilton Head who also wants to develop Cumberland. Finally, he goes boating on Lake Powell and then rafting down the Grand Canyon with Floyd Dominy, long-time Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, which builds dams.

Apparently, McPhee brought a tape recorder in his backpack because he reports long conversations verbatim. Through these conversations, Brower and his protagonists come to respect each other, even like each other a little on a personal level. That's important for the book, which demands that both sides of the debate be sympathetic figures. I don't doubt that McPhee came to like his subjects as well.

I was struck by the extent to which the three pro-development figures all came across as charismatic, larger-than-life figures. McPhee often portrays Brower as quiet, reflective, and most definitely not charismatic. Yet it's clear from Brower's successes in the environmental movement that he has significant personal appeal. That didn't come across in this book at all.

Though it's 35 years old, the issues in this book are still important. It would make an excellent book for a reading group or discussion group, or for high school or college classes on the environment.

McPhee, in the tradition of the majority of his books, has done an amazing job of documenting some of the most interesting and powerful minds that control the environmental debate of our time. Only he does what no other person could do. He takes the figures that have found themselves on the opposite ends of the debate and brings them together to spend time with one another, at which point McPhee lets his journalistic qualities take over. This book presents the environmental debate in a very clear and concise manner by going to the heart of the issues and exploring them with those who are the keyplayers. McPhee never ceases to amaze me. One the best books I've read all year

In this collection of three of his New Yorker pieces, McPhee offers a unique perspective on the clash between hard-core environmentalism & the forces of development. He describes encounters between David Bower, executive director of the Sierra Club & then founder of Friends of the Earth, and:

(1) Charles Park, a mineral engineer, looking for copper in Glacier Peak Wilderness in the Cascades. Park believes that, "Minerals are where you find them. The quantities are finite." So you go & get them wherever they are located. McPhee goes with them as they hike through the mountains.

(2) Charles Fraser, developer of Hilton Head Island's Sea Pines Plantation, who has obtained 3000 acres on undeveloped Cumberland Island. Fraser has bent over backwards in previous developments to preserve as much of the original landscape as he could, but he considers all environmentalists to be "druids" who will sacrifice people to save trees.

& (3) Floyd Dominy, United States Commissioner of Reclamation and devoted dam builder. McPhee brings them together to walk the Glen Canyon Dam. As McPhee says, dams cause a visceral reaction among environmentalists because, "Humiliating nature, a dam is evil..." .

By bringing these men of starkly different viewpoint together & letting them speak for themselves, McPhee presents us with a dialogue that is pretty balanced. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of how the two sides in the preservation vs. development debate came to be so absolutist. As Brower says at one point: "Objectivity is the greatest threat to the United States today." But one finishes the book wondering if making totally subjective judgments and arguments has really helped the environment or cause of environmentalism.

GRADE: B+

I have an environmental background but never bought into the religion. I am not a fan of Brower but I wanted to learn more about him. I gained far more from this book than I had bargained for: McPhee is an amazing journalist, Brower is an interesting guy, and Brower's opponents were just as convicted to their causes.

This is my first McPhee book. In the first few pages, I watched him reveal one of the characters as if he knew him intimately, or designed him in eloquent detail for a novel. It seemed like McPhee really knew these people, and had the ability to let the reader really know these people as well.

The main theme of this book is the difference between conservation and preservation. Do you leave the wilderness alone or do you mine the copper that society depends on? Do you protect the island of the rich and famous, or do you build resorts so kids can visit it? Do you let the river run free for the few who can make it and the rest who are happy to know it's there, or do you dam it for the water and the electricity and the accessability?

What was so beautiful about this book was that each of these people, Brower and his three opponents, all loved the places they were arguing about. They just saw something different. They were all out there to do something good. And often, they would pause, and enjoy the scenery, the moment, the beauty together. It was the connections that gave the contrasts such meaning. It portrayed the struggles many of us have; conserve or preserve?