The Control of Nature

The Control of Nature by John McPhee was published in 1989 and includes three essays/articles reported from different geographic locales that reflect one common theme: man attempting to control nature. McPhee got his start in journalism writing for Time magazine. He has written for The New Yorker for several decades and has published 30 books, including Annals of the Former World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He has also taught writing at Princeton University since 1975. McPhee was writing his 1986 book Rising from the Plains when he came across the phrase “STRIVE ON—THE CONTROL OF NATURE IS WON, NOT GIVEN” inscribed on a building at the University of Wyoming. This phrase gave rise to the title of The Control of Nature.

In the book’s first essay, McPhee travels to southern Louisiana to examine the Mississippi River, which is at risk of being overtaken by its tributary, the Atchafalaya River. However, because millions of people—and multi-million-dollar industries like fishing and oil—depend upon the Mississippi River, the Army Corps of Engineers has worked for decades to control the flow of the Mississippi River through man-made devices, levees, and canals. McPhee travels up and down the Mississippi on an Army-controlled barge on which he meets both civilians and military personnel, including members of the local Cajun community. It appears the Army is running out of time to prevent the Atchafalaya’s eventual capture.

In the second essay, McPhee goes to a set of islands in Iceland known as Vestmannaeyjar. The most prominent of these islands, Heimaey, suffered from a volcanic eruption that continues for weeks, creating a new volcano, extending the length of the island, and reshaping its harbor. Countless homes were buried underneath the rock fragments spewing from the lava, and many residents fled the island, never to return. To save the town of Heimaey and its harbor—along with the fishing industry there—an Icelandic scientist devised a long-shot plan: Stop the lava flow by cooling the eruption with water. The plan seemingly worked, and eventually the scientist and his team got more support in the form of higher-grade pumping equipment and military commanders. However, their cooling operation reshaped the nature of the island in terms of its geography, inhabitants, economy, and culture—and not always for the better.

In the third and final essay, McPhee returns to the United States and visits Los Angeles. The communities of northeast Los Angeles face threats from the nearby mountains, particularly in the form of debris flows. Following fires and rainstorms, the mountain sediment becomes loose and comes toppling down in a sludge of boulders, soil, and mud that destroys homes and takes lives. Such debris flows are a consequence of building homes that back up into the mountains, but engineers in a department in the city of Los Angeles—known as Flood—are determined to prevent debris flows from crushing residents. They have erected debris basins in the mountains to collect debris before it collapses upon the—often expensive—homes below. Although these basins are somewhat successful, they occasionally overflow, leading to destruction. The residents live here to escape the city life and enjoy the beauty of nature, but their peaceful existence is troubled by the possibility of debris flows, which cannot always be contained.

McPhee ties together these disparate topics by exploring how humans—especially the Army Corps of Engineers—toy with the nature around them. While they do so in the interest of survival, their actions sometimes backfire, causing even more unanticipated problems.