When I read John McPhee, I need more than the book . I need a fishing rod, or a canoe, or a forest or whatever else he’s talking about. I start out sitting on a couch and an hour later find myself carving canoe pieces into my cottage cheese with a spoon.
The details are the reason I read McPhee. He is a quiet author, rarely present within the story and never the main point of interest. But his description is unrivaled. If McPhee were to write a book about toilet paper, I would read it. And love it.
I came late to McPhee, just after college. It was the height of the 2008 Presidential campaign, and some pundit quoted a line from Coming Into The Country, saying that the book was key to understanding Alaska and, presumably, Sarah Palin.
At the time, Sarah Palin seemed like an inexplicable thing so I checked the book out. It did nothing to help me understand the candidate. But it did give me the extreme and frequent urge to get to a very wild area and stay.
I am now reading The Survival of the Bark Canoe and in the first 50 pages, two things have occurred to me. One, I won’t be able to sleep unless I grab the old aluminum canoe, drive it upstream 20 miles and float back home. And two, among the greatest camping/fishing/hiking/canoeing partners, McPhee would rank damn near the top.
