Geo Gold Emmons: June 2016

This post is to introduce John McPhee to the geologists that have not yet discovered his wonderful writing of "creative non-fiction." All geologists will gain further knowledge and enjoyment by reading the books by John McPhee. He has written over thirty books. Many are about geology. He travels the world with leading geologists and professors of geology. One of the main focuses are on development of plate tectonics starting in the 1960's and 1970's. McPhee is a ,professor at Princeton University and a long time staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. Many of his writings were first published in the magazine.

A great one to start with is Annals of a Former World published in 1998 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999. It is collection of previously published books: Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and a new book Crossing the Craton. His books are published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

The first McPhee book that I read was Encounters with the Archdruid (1971). The book was written in the formative stages of the environmental movement. There are three parts to this book. They all involve McPhee and David Brower and three men that supported the development of natural resources in the United States. Brower was the head of the Sierra Club in the 1950's and 1960's. He later founded the Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute.

McPhee visits Glacier Peak in Washington in the Cascades and a wilderness area. He visits the area with Charles Park (a well known mining geologist and author of a commonly used college textbook on ore deposits) along with Bowers. Park is of the opinion that since we have no control of where ore deposits are located, the should be mined even if the White House needed to be moved.

The second meeting and excursion is with Charles Fraser, business man and real-estate developer. Fraser wants to develop a large housing project on a "wild island" off the coast of Georgia. Fraser is no-friend to environmentalists and refers to them as "druids."

The final episode is with Floyd Dominy, a longtime commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. Dominy earned his moniker as the archenemy of the druid by overseeing the building of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. McPhee is able to get Brower and Dominy to agree to a raft trip through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Dominy has his eyes on building a dam in the Grand Canyon. As we know this dam was never built. The Glen Canyon Dam was built forming Lake Powell. David Brower states that his greatest failure was not preventing the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. After that failure, Brower and the Sierra Club became more determined in the efforts to fight large development projects.

Some interesting quotes from Basin and Range:

"as a general rule material will flow rather than fracture if it is hotter than half its melting point measured from absolute zero." p. 57
"The whole of plate tectonics, a story of steady-state violence along boundaries, was being brought to light largely as a result of the development of instruments of war." p. 127 [He is referring to the development of the magnetometer and the detection of "magnetic strips" on the ocean floor which confirmed "Continental Drift and "Plate Tectonics."]

McPhee's "favorite"

"If by some fiat I had to restrict my writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The Summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."

And possibly my "favorite"

"With their four-dimensional minds, and in their interdisciplinary ultra verbal way, geologists can wiggle out of almost anything."

Here is a list of the books by John McPhee. I hope this post encourages you to read one or more of his books. They are great reads!

A Sense of Where You Are: A Profile of Princeton's Bill Bradley (1965)
The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden, of Deerfield (1966)
Oranges (1967)
The Pine Barrens (1968)
Levels of the Game (1969)
The Crofter and the Laird (1970)
Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973)
The Curve of Binding Energy (1974)
Pieces of the Frame (1975)
The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975)
The John McPhee Reader (1976)
Coming into the Country (1977)
A Roomfull of Hovings and Other Profiles (1979)
Giving Good Weight (1979)
Basin and Range (1981)
In Suspect Terrain (1983)
La Place de la Concorde Suisse (1984)
Heirs of General Practice (1984)
Table of Contents (1985)
Rising from the Plains (1986)
The Control of Nature (1989)
Assembling California (1993)
The Ransom of Russian Art (1994)
The Second John McPhee Reader (1996)
Irons in the Fire (1997, essays)
Annals of the Former World (1998)
The Founding Fish (2002)
Uncommon Carriers (2006)
Silk Parachute (2010)

Dear friends and colleagues,

In 2014, I took the Viking River Cruise up the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basal. The trip went through four countries: The Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland. It was a great tour of the Rhine River Valley and many ancient castles and even Roman ruins in Cologne.

One of my favorite stops was in Heidelberg were we visited the castle overlooking the Rhine. The castle is constructed mostly of "Red Sandstone" which displays beautiful cross bedding. I thought the readers might enjoy seeing some photos and learning a little history of the castle.

The castle was started in 1225 (approximate). In 1622, the castle was captured by the French during the Thirty Years War. It was of the first used of explosives to attack and destroy a castle. The castle suffered damage by several fires. The Heidelberg has had numerous famous visitors including Martin Luther and Mark Twain. Twain spent several months in Heidelberg in 1878 when he toured Europe. His book "A Tramp Abroad" was written in 1880 about his travels in Europe.

“A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him!” From "A Tramp Abroad"