Who would have thought an anthropological, almost ethnographic, account of the author's time spent in the nation's Last Frontier, the great North of Alaska, just a handful of years after its admission to the Union as the 49th state, would be so wholly engaging. Not this city boy.

John McPhee was a Princeton-educated easterner from New Jersey with an interest in preservation and environmental concerns, but also an extraordinary ability to capture peoples with his depiction of their most mundane moments: foraging for food, constructing shelter in the subarctic wild, and even subsisting on public assistance in the extreme northwest fringes of the country. Yet he brings to life an assortment of highly developed real-life characters just living their usual lives under very unusual circumstances.

The book is largely sectioned off into accounts of the author's personal travails through the bush north of Fairbanks but south of the North Slope: bears, ptarmigans, graylings, Eskimos, and ice cold glacial rivers. Then the story moves south to the story of site selection for the potential move of the capital from Juneau to Anchorage. Political intrigue, tensions between locals and the state and federal government. Bears. The Anchorage media sought to pressure a move closer to the center of population in the state, while Juneau persisted despite its remote location to the extreme southeast of the state. Finally, the author moves the story to the tiny towns north and east of Fairbanks such as Circle, Eagle, and Tok, where only the hardiest of diehards will brave the extreme winters, and bears, along the Yukon River at minus sixty and seventy below zero.

I was amazed and impressed with the honesty and utterly guileless approach the author took to writing of river and bush people who are self-described isolationists. McPhee genuinely loves his subjects and relates their love for the land, despite their eccentricities, gruffness, and the endless cycle of death that pervades the wild. "You look at this country, it hits you in the face. . . . That life and death are not a duality. They're just simply here--life, death--in the all-pervading mesh that holds things together."

It's a rare thing to find a pick that captivates each time I pick it up, which reads so fluidly and seamlessly that it's akin to catching up with a longtime acquaintance. I read this book in preparation for an upcoming trip to Alaska, and what I found was a world of wonder unlocked by the narrative of a keen observer who loved those he observed.

I am looking forward to my trip.

it took us almost a year but Zach and I finished it!

I was really hoping this would be about geology, along the lines of Basin and Range. It wasn't. It's divided into three sections; in the first, McPhee wanders around unpopulated Alaska with several other men in several canoes/kayaks. I think one was from the Sierra Club, one from the Bureau of Land Management, etc. They fished to supplement their food supplies, and camped along the rivers and streams. The second section was about the attempt to get Alaska's capital moved from Juneau. I now know more about this issue than I ever wanted to. At the end of the section it really sounded like the move was going to come off; people voted and wanted the capital moved to Willow. (This was written in 1977.) But a check of the primary authority on such matters, Wikipedia, shows that Juneau is still the capital, so McPhee must have been stoned or something when he wrote that sentence.

In the third section McPhee moved to Eagle, a teeny tiny town on the Yukon River, and pretty much just interviewed the residents of Eagle and told us their stories. Some are interesting; some aren't. (The 2010 census showed the population of Eagle as 86.)

In spite of the need for women to be tough in the wilds of Alaska, there are no women's libbers here. The women do all the cookin' and much, much more; wood choppin', skinnin' of critters, waitin' for the menfolk to come a-home from their trips.

Maybe a few people sound relatively sane, but most sound a bit crazy. Or a lot crazy. There are your Cliven Bundy types up there. They don't like the people of the lower 48 dictating the rules in Alaska. Alaska is different. People of Alaska, hear me: Alaska is not different. It is a state that in many respects is qualitatively different from, say, Connecticut. It is not legally, Constitutionally, different. Because you build a cabin on a plot of land, trap and hunt your own critters for food, bulldoze yourself a gravel landing strip for your little plane, it does not follow that you now own that land. Don't get all uppity when the Bureau of Land Management comes to tell you you don't actually own that land. You know how I know I own my home? Because I wrote a check; the bank agreed to supply the rest; we had a ceremony (with lawyers for both sides) where we all signed many sheets of paper; and at the end of it one of these sheets of paper was the title and deed to my home. Plus I pay real estate taxes on this home. If the Bureau of Land Management comes to tell me I don't own my home, then we have a problem. You, Alaska trapper and fisher with no title to your little cabin, you don't have a problem.

McPhee's writing style wears thin. This was 438 pages of it.

This book is fantastic for anyone who wants to know more about Alaska and its tensions. It was written in the early '70s, right after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act ('71) and shortly after statehood ('59), when the federal and state governments were sorting themselves out—and people had *opinions* about it. The pipeline, regulation, and conflict between subsistence and cash economies create a backdrop for each of the pieces. The titular essay—mainly about homesteading and the personalities of folks (white + native Alaskans both) who live in the bush/small villages—dragged a bit for me, but would otherwise rate 5 stars.

Terrific book to give you a flavor of Alaska and its people in the mid-1970s. Beautiful prose. Occasionally, McPhee will include a series of quotes (12-20 at a time) from various residents that provide the most enlightening picture of the *variety* of personalities and their opinions on everything from statehood to the location of the capital, walking in bear country with and without a gun, religion, the supposed base nature of the native population, the Bible thumpers, the conservationists, the hippies, the gold miners and more. Highly recommended.

This book was a challenge for me. McPhee divided his exploration of Alaska into three sections--the first, stage-setting section on the northern tree line; the second, uses the search for an ideal site for a new state capital to explore urban Alaska; and the final section, on "the bush," really focuses on the motives and lifestyles of in-migrants to the state. I breezed through the first two parts; the relocation of the state capital (which never happened) in particular was literally a bird's eye view of Alaskan cities and their inhabitants. The third part, however, desperately needed editing: descriptions of grizzly dangers, gold-sluicing methods, and conflicts among resource-hungry and cabin-fevered Yukon inhabitants became monotonous and overly repetitive. McPhee clearly became enamored of the rugged individualists who chose to leave the Lower Forty-eight behind to build lives based on subsistence and skills-building. While his book does not gloss over their less admirable qualities--a tendency toward paranoia, chaos, alchoholism, and particularly misogyny--he comes down firmly for their willingness to pit themselves against nature. Surveying the environmental effects of one gold-mining team's efforts, he writes, "This pretty little stream is being disassembled in the name of gold.... Am I disgusted? Manifestly not.... This mine is a cork on the sea. Meanwhile (and, possibly more seriously), the relationship between this father and son is as attractive as anything I have seen in Alaska--both of them self-reliant beyond the usual reach of the term, the characteristic formed by this country." (410) This celebration of masculine triumph over nature is nothing new, and is disappointing from a writer who can be such a subtle thinker.

“If anyone could figure out how to steal Italy, Alaska would be the place to hid it." What a vivid way to describe Alaska's immensity. 'There has been a host of excellent books on Alaska. My favorite until recently was Joe McGinnis's Going to Extremes but John McPhee's Coming Into the Country is wonderful, too.
McPhee's book is divided into three parts: first an exploration of wilderness described during the course of a canoe/kayak trip down the Salmon River. Much in the manner of the river, his descriptions meander into all sorts of eddies and whirlpools. His description of bush pilots is priceless. On one occasion he is flying (a regularly scheduled airline, mind you) in a single engine plane in horrible weather. The pilot is skimming the trees to find landmarks because he can't see anything. He has a map on his lap, but suddenly hands it to a passenger to help figure out where they are. "I had been chewing gum so vigorously that the hinges of my jaws would ache for two days."
Stumbling on a grizzly bear in a blueberry patch (fortunately upwind), he muses on the best way to survive a grizzly's charge - no consensus of opinion, but most survivors believe the best thing to do is stand absolutely still and shout as loudly as possible, for that is the least likely reaction the bear, which does not have good sight, would expect of game. Running away is useless for grizzlies are very fast. They are also quite coordinated. They enjoy schussing down snow-covered mountains at 96 feet/second through trees and around boulders only to screech to a stop, stand up and walk away, just before going -over the edge of a cliff.
The second part of the book discusses the Alaskan government's search for a new capital and the conflict that generated. Juneau really makes a lousy site because of its remoteness, not to mention its horrible landing approach to the airport. Alaska attracts very independent and anti-authoritarian types of people so it witnesses a battle between those suffering from the "Sierra Club Syndrome" or others fondly embracing the "Dallas Scenario."
Many of these folks are affectionately profiled in the third section. John Cook, for example, has consciously tried to eliminate the need for money and authority. He tries to live on $1,500 a year (this was written in the mid seventies); he has a series of trap lines and rarely uses a parka, even at -30'. The closest town is Eagle, about 30 miles away via dog sled, with a population of about 100. Almost all live by the ut restrictions on code, "Never put restrictions on any individual.... Up here they ain't gettin' you for spittin' on the sidewalk."
Ironically, most moved there for the space, yet land is less available (as of 1977) than in the lower '48 because when Alaska became a state deals were made with the native Americans and the federal government to set aside almost the entire state as either a reservation or park land. Whereas before statehood someone could build a cabin 80 miles from nowhere, now a government helicopter might fly over and throw them out. Homesteading no longer exists, but in Alaska that loss seems especially poignant in territory where you might have to fly somewhere to take a shower.

This was written in 1976-77, so some of that era’s hot-button issues aren’t as hot (maybe), but this is a fascinating in-depth look at Alaska. I’d love to read a follow-up – I know what lands have subsequently been “protected”, and I know they haven’t moved the capital from Juneau, but living in the lower-48, I don’t really know how some of the other issues have been resolved (or if they have been). Once again, McPhee has an amazing ability to show both/all sides of an issue without allowing his personal opinion to cloud the presentation. Occasionally he’ll actually tell you “OK, now I’m giving you my opinion” – but even then, he tempers that by saying he is probably too close to his study subjects to provide an objective viewpoint. My own personal history with Eagle made the last half of the book totally alive for me.

The Country lies around the upper Yukon River. The book induced aching for it. This one work teaches more about Alaska than any other source I know: Statehood demeaned Alaska, the Native Claims Settlement Act made a well-intentioned wreck, and the pipeline contorted it in good and bad ways that will prove insignificant over time. Most of all, the book made clear how painful the federal government's interference is to "whites and Indians alike" of The Country.

Fascinating book. Tather than focusing on what makes Alaska "wild", McPhee concentrates on the people that are living and working within this colossal landscape and why they've chosen to live here. This makes it a much more rounded and interesting rumination on one of the last frontiers.

John McPhee has always been my hero and a writing mentor. He helped me form my definition of a good writer -- one who can compel a reader to continue reading something they would otherwise care nothing about.

Pretty engrossing non-fiction take on 70s Alaska in three parts: 1) river trip with bureaucrats, 2) search for a new capital city, and 3) heavy local color in a bush town. I find McPhee’s non-linear structure a touch overwrought and his frequent quotations a bit manufactured, but otherwise really enjoy his style. Great description of the many ways to use a 56-gallon drum.