April 7, 2025 Issue

In this week’s issue, Elizabeth Kolbert revisits John McPhee’s classic “Encounters with the Archdruid” (The New Yorker, March 20, 27 & April 3, 1971). McPhee’s piece pits an environmentalist (Brock Brower) against three developers (Charles Park, a mining geologist; Charles Fraser, a resort developer; and Floyd Dominy, a dam-builder). The piece is divided into three parts – one for each developer. Kolbert, in her piece, focuses on Part I – Brower vs. Park. She writes,

The trail to Miners Ridge wound through some of America’s most spectacular scenery—snow-covered peaks, riffled streams, meadows spangled with wildflowers. Trudging along, Brower and Park admired the view and exchanged shots.

“Geologists go into the field because of love of the earth and of the out-of-doors,” Park says at one point.

“The irony is that they go into wilderness and change it,” Brower retorts. He declares the proposed mine an abomination: “If we’re down to where we have to take copper from places this beautiful, we’re down pretty far.”

“Minerals are where you find them,” Park counters. “It’s criminal to waste minerals when the standard of living of your people depends upon them.”

Who wins this back-and-forth? It’s hard to say. Though the piece is nominally about Brower—the Archdruid of the title, who returns in subsequent installments in the three-part series—Park is an equally compelling character and, quite possibly, a better debater. Brower is a crusader, Park a pragmatist.

Kolbert praises McPhee for his “evenhandedness.” She says, “He never reveals whose side he’s on.” I think this is true to a degree. He doesn’t reveal it explicitly. But at the end of Part I, he seems to contrast Brower’s generosity with Park’s materialism. The three men are resting on Miner’s Ridge. Park is eating blueberries straight from the bush. Brower is gathering his in a cup. McPhee writes, 

Brower’s cup was up to its brim, and before he ate any himself he passed them among the rest of us. It was a curious and surpassingly generous gesture, since we were surrounded by bushes that were loaded with berries. We all accepted.

“I just feel sorry for all you people who don’t know what these mountains are good for,” Brower said.

“What are they good for?” I said.

“Berries,” said Brower.

And Park said, “Copper.”

Park may have the last word, and he may be an attractive person, but it is Brower who has a sense of the possibilities of our companionship with the earth rather than our control of nature. Near the end of the piece, McPhee describes Brower as a man whose “love of beauty is so powerful it leaps ... [and] lands in unexpected places.”