This is the sixth in a series of twelve monthly posts in which I’ll reread my three favorite travel books – Edward Hoagland’s Notes from the Century Before (1969), John McPhee’s Coming into the Country (1977), and Ian Frazier’s Great Plains (1989) – and compare them. Today, I’ll focus on their sense of place.
How do you evoke places as vast as Alaska, the Great Plains, and northern British Columbia? One way is by immersing yourself in them and describing the experience. That’s what Hoagland, McPhee, and Frazier do in these three great books. What do I mean by immersion? Consider this:
Incredible spoked sundials are set up along shore where the big cottonwoods have been undermined and have fallen over with their bleached roots exposed. The Katete debouches through a thick screen of swamp. A wide valley funnels back to mountains and saddles which encircle the end. The Ikut, the largest tributary on the Stikine, is next, even more barricaded behind islands and sloughs. It’s a classic straight corridor through a vast steep valley of virgin trees, each as straight as if it had been plumbed. The Stikine weaves, like the highway it is. As we approach the mountains before us, they slowly open a gap, which closes again after we pass. We feel our way over the snags, often nuzzling so closely against an island that we can hear the songbirds over the noise. Crossing again, we slip backwards eerily for what seems along time, only just succeeding in holding our slant. The scow up in front is fun to ride because it slides vibrationlessly, but so is the galley of the Judith Ann, where the floor jangles in frenzy and the glasses and plates deafen the floor. The river is often a mile across, an eddying gale of gray water. A half-skinned cedar floats by with flesh-colored protrusions where the limbs were. Great Glacier, in its majestic slash of a valley, takes two hours to pass. Mud Glacier, two hours more. This is the spine of the coast range. The mountains go 6,000 to 10,000 feet, to gunsight peaks and to sailing, razory peaks. They’re blue, cut with shadows and loaded with snow, and they carry small glaciers slung on their hips. A sudden slide wipes out a waterfall before our eyes, and the black and white patterns of snow that are left are like dramatic couturier’s dresses.
That’s from Hoagland’s marvellous Notes from the Century Before. He’s traveling up the Stikine, on his way to Telegraph Creek. And he, like the river, is in full flood. His words call up pictures: the bleached roots of fallen cottonwoods like “incredible spoked sundials”; “thick screen of swamp”; a tributary “barricaded behind islands and sloughs”; virgin trees “each as straight as if it had been plumbed”; the river “often a mile across, an eddying gale of gray water”; a floating half-skinned cedar “with flesh-colored protrusions where the limbs were”; a glacier “in its majestic slash of a valley”; mountains “blue, cut with shadows and loaded with snow, and they carry small glaciers slung on their hips.” We are plunged into a world of rivers, mountains, valleys, islands, swamps, glaciers, waterfalls, and snow. We aren’t just looking at a river; we are on it (“We feel our way over the snags, often nuzzling so closely against an island that we can hear the songbirds over the noise”). Note the specificity of language, particularly the use of proper nouns (“Katete,” “Ikut,” “Stikine,” “Judith Ann,” “Great Glacier,” “Mud Glacier”). Above all, note that sublime “but so is the galley of the Judith Ann, where the floor jangles in frenzy and the glasses and plates deafen the floor.” All the ingredients of Hoagland’s bravura immersive style are here: specificity, vivid figuration, perceptual rapture. Page after glorious page, this is the way he evokes the Stikene’s wild, labyrinthine world.
Let’s stick with rivers, but now it’s the Salmon of the Brooks Range, and we’re in John McPhee’s superb Coming into the Country:
My bandana is rolled on the diagonal and retains water fairly well. I keep it knotted around my head, and now and then dip it into the river. The water is forty-six degrees. Against the temples, it is refrigerant and relieving. This has done away with the headaches that the sun caused in days before. The Arctic sun – penetrating, intense – seems not so much to shine as to strike. Even the trickles of water that run down my T-shirt feel good. Meanwhile, the river – the clearest, purest water I have ever seen flowing over rocks – breaks the light into flashes and sends them upward into the eyes. The headaches have reminded me of the kind that are sometimes caused by altitude, but, for all the fact that we have come down through mountains, we have not been higher than a few hundred feet above the level of the sea. Drifting now – a canoe, two kayaks – and thanking God it is not my turn in either of the kayaks, I lift my fishing rod from the tines of a caribou rack (lashed there in mid-canoe to the duffel) and send a line flying toward the a wall of bedrock by the edge of the stream. A grayling comes up and, after some hesitation, takes the lure and runs with it for a time. I disengage the lure and let the grayling go, being mindful not to wipe my hands on my shirt. Several days in use, the shirt is approaching filthy, but here among grizzly bears I would prefer to stink of humanity than of fish.
Talk about immersion! That is the opening paragraph of the book. Immediately, we are there, with McPhee, in a canoe, on the Salmon, in northern Alaska. Note how he palpably conveys temperature: “The water is forty-six degrees. Against the temples, it is refrigerant and relieving.” He writes from an immediate sensation of things: “The Arctic sun – penetrating, intense – seems not so much to shine as to strike. Even the trickles of water that run down my T-shirt feel good.” Through his description of his sensory experience, McPhee gets us as close as he can to the Salmon’s physical reality. That paragraph is my favorite beginning in all of literature. (I first read it when “The Encircled River” appeared in The New Yorker, May 2, 1977.)
Continuing our river motif, consider this passage from Ian Frazier’s Great Plains:
Among the rivers of the Great Plains are the Cimarron, the Red, the Brazos, the Purgatoire, the Trinity, the Big Sandy, the Canadian, the Smoky Hill, the Solomon, the Republican, the Arikaree, the Frenchman, the Little Blue, the South Platte, the North Platte, the Laramie, the Loup, the Niobrara, the White Earth, the Cheyenne, the Owl, the Grand, the Cannonball, the Heart, the Knife, the Little Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Powder, the Tongue, the Bighorn, the Musselshell, the Judith, the Marias, the Milk, the Missouri.
You might say, well, that’s just a list. Yes, but what a list! It’s certainly a sign that Frazier is interested in rivers. In the next paragraph, he describes their reality:
The rivers of the southern plains are dry much of their length, much of the year. All-terrain-vehicle tracks cross the white sand in the bed of the North Fork of the Red. As you go north, the rivers are more likely to have water. Descending from the flat benchland into their valleys can be like walking off a hot sidewalk into a spa. Cottonwood trees grow in all the valleys; suddenly there is something between you and the sun. The trees lean at odd angles, like flowers in a vase. In the summers, windrows of cottonwood-seed down cover the ground. Big cottonwoods have bark as ridged as a tractor tire, and the buffalo used to love to rub against it. In the shedding season, the river bottoms would often be ankle-deep in buffalo hair. At sunset, the shadows of the cottonwoods fall across the river and flutter on the riffles. Carp sometimes rise up and suck insects off the surface with the same noise the last of the bathwater makes going down the drain. Sandbar willows grow as straight as dowels in the gray-black mud along the banks. Game trails six inches wide wind through the willows. For a while, the air is smarting with mosquitoes, and weird little bugs that don’t bite but just dive right for your eyes. Later there are stars, and silence. At dawn, birds pipe the light through the trees.
God, who would not want such exquisite writing to go on forever? I love the immediacy of that “Cottonwood trees grow in all the valleys; suddenly there is something between you and the sun.” It puts me right there in the cottonwood shade! The last line is inspired! The whole passage is inspired! I relish the way it blends arresting historical detail (“In the shedding season, the river bottoms would often be ankle-deep in buffalo hair”) and vivid personal observation (“Carp sometimes rise up and suck insects off the surface with the same noise the last of the bathwater makes going down the drain”). Frazier is a phenomenal describer.
Description of landscape is one way to evoke place. Another is description of people. That will be the subject of my next post in this series.
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