Encounters with the Archdruid
Book description
The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails,…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Encounters with the Archdruid as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
In John McPhee’s classic defense of environmental sanity and wilderness protection, the archdruid is David Brower, in his day among the planet’s most fervent environmentalists and defenders of nature.
Charles Fraser, a resort developer, labeled Brower a “druid”: i.e., “ a religious figure who sacrifices people and worships trees,” and I know of no other book that so starkly contrasts the urge to develop everything—even the Grand Canyon!—with the counter urge to preserve as much as possible of the wild before it is all gone.
I deeply appreciate McPhee’s format: a series of dialogues in which Brower and his three…
From Michael's list on passion for the American wilderness.
The “archdruid” in John McPhee’s 1971 narrative nonfiction book Encounters with the Archdruid is David Brower, the ardent, at times militant conservationist who spent the latter half of the 20th century fighting to protect wilderness and wild places from commercial exploitation. McPhee profiles Brower with characteristic depth and detail by bringing him together with three foes: a mineral engineer set on mining in the Glacier Peak Wilderness in the Cascade mountains of Washington; a real estate developer who hoped to build homes on what is now Cumberland Island National Seashore, and the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which,…
From David's list on the environmental movement in America.
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