I faced an unwelcome prospect my first year in college: a mandatory lab science course. My options included Rocks for Jocks and Rat Psych. I took Rat Psych. Didn't learn much. But that's okay. Fifty years later I read Rising from the Plains and undoubtedly learned more about geology than I would have by signing up for Rocks for Jocks.

Not that I understood all, or most, of Rising from the Plains, focused on Wyoming and a geologist named David Love, whose life proved to be a western saga Wallace Stegner might have written, or, heaven forbid, James Michener. The problem was the avalanche of names and data centered on Wyoming's epic role in Earth's history, the collisions of forces and permutations of chemistry over billions of years. Fascinating stuff but hard to keep straight. Every chapter should be accompanied by a map. I love maps. And there should be photos, lots of them.

Nonetheless this effort in force-feeding the geologically uninitiated taught me a great deal, which I do not, dare not, hasten to explain, starting with the contrast between everything thought to be known about geology and everything yet to be known, the contradictions within plate tectonic theory, for example--how to resolve them...or just live with them-- the anomalies presented by certain rocks located where they shouldn't be, and so on.

Much of Wyoming is beautiful, notably the Tetons and Yellowstone. A fair amount is ugly. Now I would look at the ugly parts differently, thinking about how they got to be so ugly.

One of my favorite observations in this book concerns lakes, which are described as rivers who have lost their getaway driver.

Unfortunately the geology saga goes this way: once upon a time there were field geologists; now there are geologists holed up in offices. Field geologists focus on accumulating facts. Office geologists focus on theories--too bad for them.,

Roaming the West With Geology

McPhee is a wonderful observer of nature and people. I love chewing away on his long, multisyllabic sentences. I read his books alongside Google Maps. In this case, I had hiked some of the same terrain with my brother, many years ago. We knew nothing about the history or geology when we were there. This book, one of the series Annals of the Former World, made me want to grab my brother, hop in my old Datsun 2000, pile the tent and backpacks on the trunk rack as we did in 1970, and drive overnight to see the area with more informed eyes. Read the other three books in the series, they are equally fascinating.

With the last two Annals of the Former World books, it's become somewhat more obvious that these books are as much the story of of specific geologists as they are of the geology itself. This book spends a lot more time on the life of David Love and his parents than it does on the actual geology itself.

I suppose I should be disappointed by the bait-and-switch as I was with n  Our Sensesn, but I think the difference is that I wasn't reading this book because I was super interested in plains geology and I found the account of the Love family getting established in Wyoming charming and interesting in its own right. I think at this point in the series you know what to expect.

3.5 of 5 stars

Book 3 of this series I am slowly making my way through. This one was a mixed bag, which is what I expect. The geology is hard to follow but intriguing. The history of one geologist in Wyoming and hist family was fascinating. Maybe I like westerns more than I think I do. And then we were back to talking geology - hot spots and the some mining and my brain turned off and every page took forever to read. But the other parts of the book definitely made up for the end parts. Pretty writing as always.

This book was intriguing to me because I know little about geology . I was particularly interested in an area of Wyoming that I have traveled over the last 30 years to go fishing by the Green River.. Now I understand that magnificent magnificent land that we observed off the I 80.

I went back and forth on this. It's quite quite hard to comprehend the motions over time just by their nature and the extremity of the changes; but I was gripped by the story of the Wyoming-bound schoolteacher from her journals. What really sticks out, of course, is the geologist-explorer at the center, who thinks exploiting resources is his purpose but starts to have some hesitations that of course now we can see are glimmers of the unsustainable truth.

I love John McPhee's writing, especially when he is describing people and places. Toward the end of this book, the in-depth description of the chaotic geologic layers of Wyoming basins and ranges left me leafing through pages rather than reading them. So truth is I am not a geologist but love to scuttle around the edges of geologic formations. I did recommend that my Wyoming son read this book.

John McPhee conveys a vivid sense of time and place, and I feel like I am there for the telling of the story.

There are three stories combined in this little book: that of David Love, and his singular and unequaled contributions to geology; the science of the geology that was his life's work; and the story of his life growing up in a remote part of Wyoming homesteaded by his parents.

I love science, and much of the geology text is beyond me, but his methods, particularly the actual field work, sets him apart and above most in his field of research.

The story of his parents and their life on the homestead is a tribute to the intrepid pioneer spirit that is American history at its best.

My first book by this writer was THE CONTROL OF NATURE. The part of that book that told the story of how a volcanic eruption on a small island in Iceland prompted the incredible actions taken to save the island's only port is what got me on a small, single engine plane, shortly after the event, to visit the sites there.

McPhee brings Wyoming to life with its intrepid citizens, its wildlife, and its vastness.

McPhee published this book in 1985 and I've owned it for maybe 35 years. I remember being put off by the geology I didn't understand, but finding it on a shelf in the basement, I thought I'd give it another try. Glad I did. Yes, you can get lost in the geology, but there is an amazing family that gives the book a heart. McPhee's primary source was a regional geologist, named David Love whose mother and father came to Wyoming in the early 20th century. You follow this family's story as Love & McPhee drive I-80 and examine the road cuts which reveal the geological history of the state. McPhee ends the book with the geologist wondering about his career and the environmental damage it brought about.

“Everything depended on geology. Any damn fool could see that the vegetation was directly responsive to the bedrock. Hence birds and wildlife were responsive to it. We were responsive to it. In winter, our life was governed by where the wind blew, where snow accumulated.”

Geologic time and other associated stats are truly mind boggling stuff and I was compelled to read this after spending a several days in Casper and driving thru central WY to the Windy Mountains range for backpacking at 9 - 11000 feet above sea level with my sons and nephews.

in the mid 1800's homesteaders in Wyoming used to say, "If summer comes on a weekend this year, let's have a picnic!"

A must read for any Wyomingite or Wyoming lover. Yeah, it’s a book about our incredible geology. But more importantly it’s a book about how our geology calls to us, demands of us that we ask hard questions and see our history through the eyes of the Earth. Of any one of us grew up among the outcrops and uplifts and canyons like David Love we’d be geologist every last one. That McPhee could compel us to see this intricate inter being is a monumental feat of literature.