Coming Into the Country was on every list I found of books to read before visiting Alaska. Written in 1977, at times it was a little dated - but still interesting. The book is essentially broken into three sections - one is a group of men out canoeing, fishing, camping, one is about the debate about moving the capital of Alaska out of Juneau, and one is McPhee’s experiences when he moved to a town of 86 and spent his time learning about the residents and their stories. All in all an interesting read that gave me a sense of what the area was like about 45 years ago.

Meandering, long and slow, especially the last chapter, which my e-reader called 6 hours. This book had three sections - I think my favorite was the first, mostly a trip down river. The second section, about Alaska figuring to change the location of the capital, a story I had not heard. The third was basically gossip, who said what about whom, what their cabin was like, how they supplied. It's only point seemed to be describing what kind of person might have lived around Eagle, Alaska at a particular time. Pretty language, but a bit to fond to unusual non-obvious words.

Very good introduction to one of the least understood regions of the US.

Some quotes, descriptions, and info I liked:

"Pourchot, after breakfast, goes off to measure the largest of the spruce near the campsite. He finds a tree twenty-two inches in diameter, breast high. Most of the spruce in this country look like pipe cleaners. The better ones look like bottle washers.Tough they may be, but they are on the edge of their world, and their trunks can grow fifty years and be scarcely an inch through."

"Forest Eskimos, who live in five small villages on the Kobuk, do not tend to think in landscape terms that are large. They see a river not as an entity but as a pageant of parts, and every bend and eddy has a name."

Some outstanding alliteration: "No matter what the weather might be, Kauffmann said, the Brooks Range for him was the best of Alaska--in the quality of its light, in the clarity of its flowing water, in the configuration of its terrain."

"We need whole ecosystems, whole ranges, whole watersheds."
"Entire mountain ranges?"
"We're going to have to live in close harmony with the earth, There's a lot we don't know. We need places where we can learn how. The carrying capacity for plants and animals is limited here. They need plenty of space and time. Think of the years it takes a grayling to grow. If we do our thing, if we exploit shortsightedly, we impoverish even the biggest landscapes. There is no such thing as superabundance."

"In the eighteen-nineties, Jack McQuesten, a storekeeper celebrated in the country, used to plow his garden with a moose."

McPhee writes about people, places and issues in an engaging, intelligent way that avoids pedanticism. Here he conveys the romance as well as the conflict of Alaska’s statehood, presenting the impossibility of “modern” conservation ideals coexisting with economic “progress” and with maintenance of traditional lifestyles. Despite the book having been written nearly half a century ago, it is alive with descriptions and conversations that still feel relevant.

“What had struck me most in the isolation of this wilderness was an abiding sense of paradox. In its raw, convincing emphasis on the irrelevance of the visitor, it was forcefully, importantly repellent. It was no less strongly attractive—with a beauty of nowhere else, composed in turning circles. If the wild land was indifferent, it gave a sense of difference. If at moments it was frightening, requiring an effort to put down the conflagrationary imagination, it also augmented the touch of life. This was not a dare with nature. This was nature.”

I'll read John McPhee on any subject. So glad I don't live in Alaska, and so glad I read this book. Fantastic perspective of the land and the deeply curious and strong people who inhabit it.

Boring men travel down a river, stop, fish, throw some shit into their campfire, discuss bear maulings, I fell asleep. Just no.

Books I and II (the first half, essentially) were truly great. Beautifully evocative of of place, witty and informative, and very engrossing. Part III started out the same, but soon devolved into strangely long rehearsals of technical information that did nothing to illuminate the people or places being described for me. Perhaps the author felt that these things were peculiar to, and therefore illuminating of, the Alaskan bush, but I ended up very lightly skimming the last 100 pages or so.

This one had been sitting on my shelf for many years, bought after reading some non-fiction writing guide. And I wholly get why McPhee is among the brightest stars of reportage. The book opens with a beautiful description of the truly wild Alaska (not entirely unthinkable in cold Finland, where I'm from), moves to towns and then, in the longest section from which the whole book gets its name, to small villages and trapper/miner cabins on the Yukon. Perhaps inevitably, the narrative stalls in the final part, but the profiles of the people are fascinating, even if the reader could have done with slightly fewer characters. I'll forgive McPhee's dislike of environmentalists--this was the 1970s after all--but would really like to hear what has happened in the 50 years since. It was also interesting to note two things: that the paranoid style in American politics (à la Hofstadter) never ceased, with 'communism' offered as an explanation to every possible social evil by some of the 'freedom' -seeking characters in the book. Also, perhaps more surprisingly, quite a few of the people featured in the book disowned religion, contrary to the backwoods image so often heard and seen today. In sum, not perhaps the mind-blowing experience that I expected, but a great model of nature reportage.

Excellent coverage of Alaskan wilderness, attitudes, and people of the state from the late 1970s. Among other topics, he discusses in depth and through interviews how the ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971) impacted those living there, and those that continue to migrate to the homesteading life of the far north. He also covers the search for a new capital city less remote than Juneau (funding failed), the immense pipeline project across wilderness area, caribou migration and fishery industry, who has the rights and who feels bureaucrats in D.C. are overstepping with overzealous rules and regulations without understanding. He spends time with various native groups to portray their thoughts on adopting a white man's way of looking at the land they've inhabited for 10,000 years. I thoroughly enjoyed the adventures, the stories and the tackling of the immensity of the project John McPhee took on. You can spend a lifetime in Alaska and not take it all in.

Things I learned about Alaska:

-- Merrill Field, a light-plane airfield in Anchorage, handles fifty-four thousand more flights per year than Newark International. This is so because bushplane trips are more common than taxis or driving, the roads being what they are.

-- Fried cranberries will help a sore throat.

-- That somethings are better left unchanged or not re-named:

"What would you call that mountain, Willie?"
"Denali. I'll go along with the Indians that far."
Everyone aboard was white but Willie (William Igiagruq Hensley), of Arctic Alaska, and he said again, "Denali. What the hell did McKinley ever do?

I learned the difference between a visitor and a tourist in Alaska: A tourist stays a week and drops four hundred dollars. A visitor comes with a shirt and a twenty-dollar bill and doesn't change either one.

I learned that Alaska is a great place for nicknames: Pete the Pig, Pistolgrip Jim, Groundsluice Bill, Coolgardie Smith, Codfish Tom, Doc LaBooze, the Evaporated Kid, Fisty McDonald, John the Baptist, Cheeseham Sam, and the Man with the Big Nugget. I actually came across a Codfish in my own travels, but I have an odd job.

I learned that bear scat is "fairly, but not acutely fresh" when it "glistens but has stopped smoking." Not everything I learned will I actually use.

I learned that Alaska, at least the Alaska of 1977, was a place where people, tired of government and other people, fled to. I learned that the government followed them there and refused to let them alone. I learned that Alaskans are prone to a philosophy: LIVE EACH DAY SO THAT YOU CAN LOOK EVERY DAMN MAN IN THE EYE AND TELL HIM TO GO TO HELL.

We need such people. At least we need a place where such people could go. A place I might go if it wasn't so cold. A place so vast and unpeopled that if anyone could figure out how to steal Italy, Alaska would be a place to hide it.

This was another wonderful trip that John McPhee took me on. It's dated, to be sure. But wonderful characters are portrayed; good stories told. In the battle between independent, brave individuals and a pedantic, fuzzy-wuzzy government, John McPhee leaves no doubt whose side he is on.

John McPhee is one of my journalistic heroes. I read him obsessively when I was younger and yearning to become a journalist myself. This book, about Alaska, is perhaps my favorite, or at least the one I'd recommend to someone who has never read McPhee before. These days, when everyone seems to have a severely truncated attention span, perhaps McPhee can seem a touch long-winded, but I completely disagree -- I don't think he wastes a sentence. He does write in a pre-internet way, and that, in my opinion, is nothing but good. Read him on paper, not an e-reader, if possible. Even better, take this book in your backpack and head up to Alaska. Perhaps take the public ferry there, out of Bellingham, Washington. It's extremely reasonable. Bring a sleeping bag and sleep on the sundeck, saving your money. You see the same sights as the most expensive cruise ships in the world, and you'll meet some amazing people. Read "Coming into the Country" at night. See the northern lights. Feel goosebumps all over. Change your life forever. That's what I did, and I haven't regretted it for a moment.