John McPhee's Coming Into the Country

Coming into the Country

John McPhee

I'm a fan of John McPhee's writing. I've already read several of his books, including the Control of Nature and Looking for a Ship. I found this book at Goodwill and picked it up on his name alone. I'm glad I did. Out of the three books, I enjoyed this one the most.

John McPhee's Coming Into the Country is a book about his experiences in Alaska in the 1970s. McPhee, who is currently a staff writer for the New Yorker, has written 29 books on various subjects ranging from basketball to freight carriers.

The book is divided into three sections. The first is about his experiencing camping and canoeing a stretch of the Yukon River. The second section details his association with the people, both for and against, the moving of the Alaskan capital, Juneau, to a new, more central location. The final section is about his experience in the bush in the small town of Eagle, Alaska, which is near the US-Canada border. Mixed within all these sections and stories is the story of the mostly white Alaskan settler.

The first section, which is probably my favorite, is about a trip that McPhee took with several men, each who came from a different stasis in life. Most of them were government workers of some sort-- not exactly the 'mountain men' you would imagine taking a trip down the Yukon. McPhee's ability to describe the scenery, wildlife, and weather of Alaska was almost good enough to transport me to the Yukon River with him!

The second section discussed the fight to move the capital of Alaska to a more centrally located area, such as Fairbanks or Anchorage. I did not find this as interesting as the previous section-- mostly because I know things turned out. Juneau is still the capital of Alaska!

The last section details the workings of the very, very, very, very little town of Eagle, Alaska. McPhee chronicles the stories of each town member in turn, discussing their lives and opinions how one should really 'live' in the Alaskan bush. Each member has  their own story about how they got out there, how they learned to live in the wilderness, and how they continue to survive and thrive. He also discusses the mostly universal small town politics.

What impressed me the most about the entire book is the immensity of it all. It's almost impossible for me to understand how huge the state of Alaska really is-- and how small the town of Eagle-- even the city of Fairbanks--- really is-- compared to it. According to Wikipedia.org, Alaska is over 663,000 square miles. Wisconsin, in comparison, is 65,500 square miles. Alaska is over ten times larger then Wisconsin. Alaska is bigger then everything but 18 sovereign nations. If you placed it on the continental US, it would stretch-- distance wise, from the coast California to Jacksonville, Florida. A map really doesn't do it justice. In my attempt to understand where everything was, I consulted my road atlas. The powers-that-be at Rand McNally decided that the entire state of Alaska should be on one page. Even Wisconsin gets two. Years and years of looking at the Wisconsin map has given me a good  idea of the distances traveled within the scale of the map. The distance between Fairbanks and Eagle looks like the distance between Milwaukee and the Wisconsin/Illinois border. In reality, it is nearly 200 odd miles compared to 30. And this is just straight across the map-- who knows how long it would really take!