Close Encounters of the Unnatural Kind

I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.

Edward Abbey

Lake Powell

In the Back of Beyond bookstore, in Moab, Utah, you’ll find John McPhee’s Encounters with the Archdruid in the same section with Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. But where Abbey is a naturalist, McPhee is, at least here, an un-naturalist; where Abbey is a misanthrope, McPhee and his subjects show an undying respect for all Earth’s creatures.

John McPhee claims he was between stories when he got the idea to pit three combatants of nature against one of her greatest defenders, David Brower, in Encounters with the Archdruid. Charles Park, a geologist, debates mining with him in Glacier Park. Charles Fraser, a real estate developer, ponders building aesthetics with him at Sea Pines Plantation. And Floyd Dominy, a dam builder, argues for water reclamation with him in Glen Canyon.

I am at Lake Powell, the damned portion of Glen Canyon, when I begin the book; I finish it in Arches National Park, where Abbey wrote. My bookmark is a post card from Back of Beyond featuring Abbey’s face and a portion of his wilderness quote. But I am less convinced now than when I began the book that wilderness is the only thing worth saving. Humankind is often worth saving. And if John McPhee has a message, this might be it.

Some critics of McPhee’s character presentation don’t like what they see as his cold objectivity; that he doesn’t judge his subjects bothers them. But McPhee’s is a subjective portrayal. He opts to present portraits of human beings (unless they are fish or fruits) with all their complexities. And so the reader sees David Brower not merely as an archdruid—the king of the druids (Charles Fraser says “modern druids worship trees and sacrifice human beings to those trees”)—but also as a creature of compassion and compromise. And the readers sees that Brower’s opponents, like Floyd Dominy, are not, by the sole fact of their occupation, damned.

McPhee’s fair treatment of his subjects often conflicts with our own biased treatment of them. I find myself applauding Brower but then nodding with Park and Fraser and Dominy, betraying my own philosophies. Perhaps this is why his critics object. John McPhee’s whole book is a test of faith. It threatens the insecure.

The first and last of McPhee’s three sections end in a draw. At the conclusion of “A Mountain,” Brower shares the bounty of berries and his pity for those who’d wish to mine the peaks at Glacier: “I just feel sorry for all you people who don’t know what these mountains are good for....” John McPhee, the man who matched these mismatched men, provokes his chapter’s compelling close by asking what they are good for. Brower answers, “Berries.” But this is not the last word. For Park, the answer is copper. And many of us are left having to choose both A and B. Few of us are comfortable with our ambivalence.

In the conclusion of “A River,” a favorite scene at the end of the book, Floyd Dominy’s cigar fire—legendary for surviving great white rapids—has not made it through the last plunge. Brower, who was too chicken to ride most of the rapids, but who directed the raft the final time through a safe course, seems to have won the battle—wilderness liberator defeats wilderness tamer. And then, as if to underscore the notion that each piece of land or waterway is its own separate battle, as if to show the tide can turn, that the issues presented here are not black and white, “...in the dry and baking Arizona air, [Dominy] struck a match and lighted the cigar again.” It is at once a frustrating and satisfying end, an end that becomes a beginning.

Although many of my own ideals are challenged by the good debates in Encounters with the Archdruid, I finish McPhee’s book stronger, more assured. Yes, we need water, but our conservation of it should be conservative. Yes, we need development, but our construction should be conscientious. And yes, we need minerals. But with holes in our quarters, we could use less; we need berries just as much as we need copper.

The point, then, is not that wilderness is the only thing left worth saving. It is that unless we conserve wilderness, it will be impossible to preserve humankind.


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Note: And this is Residency Lesson #2. I have learned, once again, how to read.