These books are excellent examples of literary explorations of place. The locations explored – the Pine Barrens, the Meadowlands, Pine Ridge Reservation – are on the margins of society. That’s one of the things I relish. Another is the immersive way they’re explored – the walking, canoeing, driving, and roaming. McPhee climbs a fire tower to get the view:
From the fire tower on Bear Swamp Hill, in Washington Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, the view extends about twelve miles. To the north, forest land reaches to the horizon. The trees are mainly oaks and pines, and the pines predominate. Occasionally, there are long, dark, serrated stands of Atlantic white cedars, so tall and so closely set that they seem to be spread against the sky on the ridges of hills, when in fact they grow along streams that flow through the forest. To the east, the view is similar, and few people who are not native to the region can discern essential differences from the high cabin of the fire tower, even though one difference is that huge areas out in this direction are covered with dwarf forests, where a man can stand among the trees and see for miles over their upper-most branches. To the south, the view is twice broken slightly – by a lake and by a cranberry bog – but otherwise it, too, goes to the horizon in forest. To the west, pines, oaks, and cedars continue all the way, and the western horizon includes the summit of another hill – Apple Pie Hill – and the outline of another fire tower, from which the view three hundred and sixty degrees around is virtually the same as the view from Bear Swamp Hill, where, in a moment’s sweeping glance, a person can see hundreds of square miles of wilderness.
Sullivan and his friend Leo Koncher, age eighty-three, gingerly cross an old railroad bridge forty feet over the Passaic River:
Many of the railroad ties on the bridge were burnt out so that the path was like the smile of a man with no teeth. I was walking slowly in an effort to keep from falling in, and at several points we both had to get on our hands and knees to climb between faraway ties. I expressed concern. “What are you worried about” he finally asked me. I said I was worried about falling into the river. Leo shook his head in bemused disgust. When we got to the end of the bridge, he had me look up to see the elevated span stuck straight in the air like a rusted knife. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” he said. “This is really the best view.”
Frazier attends a powwow, walks around, observes all the activity, and then suddenly decides he wants to be somewhere quiet and empty:
I maneuvered through the crowd, went by the taco and lemonade stands, out the gate in the chain-link fence, through the field full of parked cars. The carnival had shut down and the rock-and-roll no longer played, and only one generator still purringly ran. I walked to downtown Pine Ridge, past the tribal building, up the hill to the old hospital, and then onto the open field of the Path the Doctors Walk On. I went half a lap around and sat down. The grass was damp; dew had begun to fall. I could hear the amplified voice of the announcer at the powwow. Then his voice stopped, and the only sound was the singing and drumming. It came through the darkness high and strong and wild as if blown on the wind. It could have been ten voices singing or it could have been a thousand. At moments it sounded like other night noises, coyotes or mosquitoes, or like a sound the land itself might make. I imagined what hearing this would have done to me if I were a young man from Bern, Switzerland (say), travelling the prairie for the first time in 1843. I knew it would have scared and thrilled me to within an inch of my life.
Or like the sound the land itself might make – how fine that is! These books are deeply in touch with the land. That’s another thing I love about them. To me, it’s their main message.
Now, to conclude, I want to imagine a collage that captures the essence of these three wonderful books. I picture it like this: the fire tower on Bear Swamp Hill; Fred Brown’s house in Hog Wallow; an old and weirdly leaning catalpa tree; the ruins of the great paper factory in Harrisville; a wild blueberry bush; Chatsworth General Store; a mud-colored 1948 De Soto; a Ryan monoplane; a pine tree with a splendid green crown and a trunk that is still black from an old fire; a green wood orchid; a whippoorwill; a big red polyethylene canoe; a muskrat; Kearney Library; a carp; stalagmites of pigeon dung; a Muscovy duck; a mosquito; Leo Koncher’s workshop, with salvaged cedar stumps on the roof; the Pulaski Skyway; the PJP landfill; the old Penn Station; the Stadium Restaurant in downtown Secaucus; a catfish covered in slime; an eagle feather on a buckskin thong; portrait of Le War Lance; Big Bat’s Texaco; a sun-dance pole; a star quilt; aerial view of White Clay; page from the Billings Gazette showing full-color photo of Frazier’s car upside down in snow-filled ditch; portrait of SuAnne Big Crow; fatality marker on Interstate 90 where SuAnne’s fatal accident occurred; grove of cotton woods; spiderwort; tumbleweeds. Overlap these images and paste them at crazy angles to each other. I call my collage “Sulpheezier.”
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