Part One. A Mountain.
The first part of the book is written about a hiking trip with David Brower and Charles Park, a geologist and mineral engineer. The dialogue between the two serves as a fascinating debate about the merits of environmentalism and the very definition of it. The two men butt heads throughout the hike up to Image Lake, a glacial pool in the Cascades. There are so many great moments of dialogue captured between the two:
Park said, "A hole in the ground will not materially hurt this scenery."
Brower stood up. "None of the experts on scenic resources will agree with you," he said. "This is one of the few remaining great wildernesses in the lower forty-eight. Copper is not a transcendent value here."
"Without copper, we'd be in a pretty sorry situation."
"If that deposit didn't exist, we'd get by without it."
"I would prefer the mountain as it is, but the copper is there."
"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. The quantities are finite. It's criminal to waste minerals when the standard of living of your people depends on them. A mine cannot move. It is fixed by nature. So it has to take precedence over any other use. If there were a copper deposit in Yellowstone Park, I'd recommend mining it. Proper use of minerals is essential. You have to go get them where they are. Our standard of living is based on this."
"For a fifty-year cycle, yes. But for the long term, no. We have to drop our standard or living, so that people a thousand years from now can have any standard of living at all."
A breeze coming off the nearby acres of snow felt cool but not chilling in the sunshine, and rumpled the white hair of the two men.
"I am not for penalizing people today for the sake of future generations," Park said.
"I really am," said Brower. "That's where we differ."
Their conversation goes on, but I think that portion really gets at the central debate between two extremes. Surely there is some synthesis of the two points of view that is a good compromise and a way forward, because I think both men are too extreme in their views. What both men agree on, unfortunately, is that population is the problem. It seems insane how common this view was in the 1960s and 70s. But they're hypocrites! McPhee writes:
"Families with more than two children should be taxed," Bower said.
"I agree with that, too. Everything is hopeless without population control."
"How many children do you have?"
"Three. How many do you have?"
"Four," Brower confessed."
They both turned to me.
"For," I said.
The medical students [who they were hiking with] looked on with interest.
"Seven billion people are going to be on the earth in the year 2000," Park said.
And has it been a disaster? Not at all to the extent the subjects of this book expected. I would say that theory is totally discredited and that Brower, Park, and McPhee may have never really believed it since they had all those kids. Now I would not say they're hypocrites if they just wanted to be taxed more, but it seems like they believe that more people is such a disaster, yet they go off trail, having the negative effect on the wilderness that they accuse others of creating just by existing. To end this discussion of Part one, here's another point in the narrative that shows their two perspectives by what each man takes from the Suiattle River:
Reaching upstream, Brower dipped himself a cupful of water. "Wilderness is worth it, if for no other reason than it is the last place on earth where you can get good water," he said. No one else said anything. We were too tired. We stared into the stream, or looked across the deep Suiattle Valley at the virgin forests on the lower slopes and the snow and ice on the upper slopes of Glacier Peak. Park's attention became fixed on the pebbles at the bottom of the stream, and after a moment he leaned forward and reached into the water, wetting his sleeve. He removed from the water a blue-and-green stone about the size of a garden pea. He set it on the palm of one hand and passed it before us. "We have been looking all day for copper," he said. "Here it is."
The beauty of the mountain across the valley was cool and absolute, but the beauty of the stone in Park's hand was warm and subjective. It affected us all. Human appetites, desires, ambitions, greeds, and profound aesthetic and acquisitional instincts were concentrated between the stone and our eyes. Park reached again into the stream and said, "Here's another one. The blue is chrysocolla--copper silicate. The rest is malachite--green copper carbonate."
I thought it was funny that McPhee mentioned Brower as having "an extraordinary affection for trains." He writes of Brower's point of view that, "A railroad over the Sierra is all right. It was there. An interstate highway is an assault on the terrain." I think McPhee writes this to point out some irony or a contradiction, but in retrospect it looks prescient. This book was written before modern knowledge of climate change, and I'd say that in 2023, the Brower of 1971 was write that a railroad is certainly better than an interstate highway from an environmental standpoint.
Part Two. An Island.
I took a lot fewer notes in this section since I already had a lot from part one, but this was a really interesting part about the developer of Hilton Head, South Carolina, who is much more idealistic in the community he is creating. But this portion really feels like it highlights the hypocrisy of both Brower and the developer, Fraser. Brower, on one hand, talks about how he likes the look of the shrimp boats off shore, and how at one point he remarks that, "There should be more masts against the sky." So in that way, Brower reveals that he's not quite such a zealot, but not because he's a moderate, but because he's a hypocrite. What Brower really likes is an aesthetic or an idea, not actually preserving nature. It's very "foreshadowing" of NIMBY behavior I think. Not sure if foreshadowing is the right word. Fraser, on the other hand, makes a lot of noise about protecting the environment of Hilton Head Island, but it's clear that what he cares about is the bottom line. When Brower remarks to Fraser that the automobile should be "ruled out" from use on the island, Fraser claims to agree, and yet, Hilton Head is filled with personal automobiles today.
Part Three. A River.
The climax of the book comes in the final part, in which Brower confronts Floyd Dominy, his archnemesis, on a river rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. McPhee arranges for the three of them (along with other tourists) to share a multi-day trip together from Lake Powell, created by Dominy's Glen Canyon Dam, through the Grand Canyon.
The lack of any mention of climate change, since this book was written in 1971, stands out a lot. Before climate change, the environmental movement was so different and so much less serious. Brower is an avowed degrowther, and climate activists hate dams more than anything else even though they provide clean power. There are some legitimate interests, like stopping pollution and preventing the extinction of endangered species. But those seem dwarfed, at least in Brower's mind, by an obsession over aesthetics, and a way nature is "supposed" to look. I can appreciate that some things are more beautiful than others, but at one point, Brower proposes building a special cutoff dam to protect Rainbow Bridge, a natural arch, from being reduced in size by flooding a creek beneath it. What are we doing here? Brower is willing to cause more ecological destruction just to get a better view.
Once again, I love McPhee's writing. One excellent passage uses the river as a metaphor for the relationship between Browe and Dominy:
Mile 130. The water is smooth here, and will be smooth for three hundred yards, and then we are going through another rapid. The temperature is a little over ninety, and the air is so dry that the rapid will feel good. Dominy and Browe are drinking beer. They have settled into a kind of routine: once a day they tear each other in half and the rest of the time they are pals.
Dominy is wearing a blue yachting cap with gold braid, and above its visor in gold letters are the words "LAKE POWELL."
There was another great point at the very end of the book, as Brower and Dominy have their final argument, that stood out to me. McPhee puts these words into their mouths as they discuss the possibility of building Hualapai Dam (never built), which would have flooded much of the Grand Canyon:
"There's another view, and I have it, and I suppose I'll die with it, Floyd. Lake Powell is a drag strip for power boats. It's for people who won't do things the easy way. The magic of Glen Canyon is dead. It has been vulgarized. Putting water in the Cathedral in the Desert was like urinating in the crypt of St. Peter's. I hope it never happens here."
"Look, Dav. I don't live in a God-damned apartment. I didn't grow up in a God-damned city. Don't give me the crap that you're the only man that understands these things. I'm a greater conservationist than you are, by far. I do things. I make things available to man. Unregulated, the Colorado River wouldn't be worth a good God damn to anybody. You conservationists are phony outdoorsmen. I'm sick and tired of a democracy that's run by a noisy minority. I'm fed up clear to my God-damned gullet. I had the guts to come out and fight you bastards."
Miscellaneous Facts:
- I learned what glacial flour is- a finely ground rock that comes out of the ice from glaciers that is a light brown dust that sometimes leaves a green sheen on water.
- Brower was a major leader in the Sierra Club and was known for introducing coffee table books that were a major force of environmentalism in the second half of the 20th century.
- The Colorado River used to be known as Old Red because it was full of red mud, but today it is far clearer due to silt being trapped behind the Glen Canyon Dam.
- At the time the book was written (1971), the author, Brower, and Dominy float 35 feet above Gregory Arch, which was covered by flooding when the Glen Canyon Dam was built. But today, it rises significantly above the water again as levels are now far lower.
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