Coming Into the Country

McPhee refers to the “gin-clear” water of Alaskan rivers, and his prose is equally lucid. It is also dense with facts, each sentence packed like a canoe or loaded raft. Serialized in the New Yorker in the 1970s, the “The Encircled River” section describes his canoe journey down a 60-mile segment of Salmon River, the most northern river above the Arctic Circle.

With four others who worked for the U.S. government, they studied the river as a national wild river Congress would be voting on to become part of the Kobuk Valley National Monument. The legislation passed under Jimmy Carter… show more.

Before I went to Alaska for the first time, I did some background reading and thankfully discovered this book and the writing of John McPhee. He and Alaska were made for each other. He’s the kind of writer who is interested in everything, and everyone, and conveys his curiosity and his discoveries with enthusiasm. Alaska is unique, as is McPhee’s style of writing, jumping from topic to topic as the mood – and his journey – takes him, and hauling the reader along with him. He’s the kind of traveling companion who’s forever saying: let’s see what’s down there, I… show more.

Regarding the Alaska portion of my life, I arrived after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and after Prudhoe Bay oil started flowing through the pipeline on June 20, 1977. Because Coming into the Country was published in 1976, the book gives us a timely account of the nation’s Last Frontier before the Settlement Act and big oil changed everything from the villages of the bush to urban Alaska. By the time everything changed again with the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989, I was a full-bore Alaskan who had worked my way up the tenure… show more.

I discovered this book long after I moved to Alaska. I was immediately in the grip of a master storyteller as McPhee chronicles his travels across the state. McPhee captures the chaos during the 1970s when every traditional way of life was upended by the construction of the Alaska oil pipeline. McPhee manages to render into words the utter vastness of the landscape and he mentions a friend of mine, Ray Bane, who was on the frontline of efforts to preserve the wilderness that many saw only as a resource to be exploited. Bane risked his life for his passion… show more.

John McPhee’s book about Alaska is a classic example of the finest travel writing. He plunges the reader into all of Alaska from the landscape of wilderness to the far-flung cities and villages, writing with a reporter’s precision and a novelist’s soul. This is the antithesis of a travel guide; there are no hotel or restaurant reservations, no recommendations for the best ocean kayaking. Instead, it is a masterpiece as revelatory about Alaska today as it was when written 45 years ago.