Rising from the Plains by John McPhee

Abstract

If HISTORY I s the narrative of humankind on earth, geology is a longer tale—that of the foundations that allowed or succored human existence. Unfortunately we hear little about it. Blame its length or the boring technicalities of some of its chapters, but geology is perhaps the most excerpted tale ever told. In grade school we hear of the rise and fall of dinosaurs, the swamp vegetation that turned to coal and diamonds under the pressure of time, and the volcanic formation of mountain ranges, but we never get the whole picture and the science of geology is rarely applied to our own backyards. John McPhee has changed that. The land—the landscape, the people, the history, and the geol­ ogy—is the basis for this extended essay. McPhee shows in startling detail the hidden richness of the most barren plains by relating the events that produced the rocks he stands on and holds in his hands. Shunting the reader back and forth across the eons and shifting his perspective from that of the geology expert, to the freshly graduated schoolmarm, to the geologist raised on this landscape, he builds up his essay layer by layer like strata of accumulating sediment. McPhee follows a few pages of geology, with a couple of stories about the Love family ranch, an overview of life on these plains four million years ago, adds quotes from the master geologist telling of his personal experience with the geology of this land which in less skilled hands would have produced a shattered unfocused piece. Yet the closures and beginnings set up a natural cycle. From the opening paragraph he lays down the layers of his narrative. “This is about high-country geology and a Rocky Mountain geologist. I raise that semaphore here at the start so no one will feel misled by an opening passage in which