The Control of Nature

The Control of Nature
Author	John McPhee
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Publication date	1989
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	272 pp
ISBN	0-374-12890-1

Last updated January 25, 2024

The Control of Nature is a 1989 nonfiction book by John McPhee that chronicles three attempts to control natural processes that had varying success. The book combines three long essays previously published in The New Yorker : "Atchafalaya", "Cooling the Lava", and "Los Angeles Against the Mountains". These respectively describe the Old River Control Structure regulating inflow to the Atchafalaya River; the Eldfell volcanic eruption of 1973; and debris flow from the San Gabriel Mountains.

Background

In 1980, McPhee traveled with his daughter on a canoe trip on the Atchafalaya River due to her fascination with the novelist Walker Percy. He had conversations with natives about the efforts made by the Army Corps of Engineers in monitoring riverflow in the area. In Vicksburg, Mississippi, a man recommended to McPhee that he research the efforts being undergone to control the debris sliding down from mountains into Los Angeles. When he visited California, a geologist informed him about lava in Iceland.^[1]

The book's title is derived from a sign on the engineering building at the University of Wyoming. Though he believes nature will win, "my book is not an editorial," McPhee said. "It is a description of people defying nature. They may have no choice."^[1] Like all of McPhee's books, The Control of Nature started out as an outline that he proceeded to fill in.^[2]

Synopsis

The book begins by describing how the Atchafalaya River drains 30 percent of the Mississippi River at its source 300 miles upriver from New Orleans. Thanks to its steeper gradient and more direct route, the Atchafalaya seeks to change the course of the Mississippi as has happened in its long geological history. Due to the Mississippi's vital importance to industry, the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a control structure at the Atchafalaya's source to prevent this from occurring and to maintain the 30 percent drainage. McPhee explains how Morgan City, Louisiana would be destroyed if the river's banks increase. Three million cubic feet of water would inundate the town in the case of a hundred-year flood, though the Corps of Engineers has been trying its hardest to build a more stable flood structure.^[2]

Publication and reception

All three essays that comprise "The Control of Nature" originally appeared in The New Yorker .^[3] After its publication as a book in 1989, The Control of Nature was McPhee's second-best selling book, after Coming into the Country .^[2] It received generally positive reviews from book critics.

Los Angeles Times critic Jack Miles praised McPhee's "knack of presenting even the most ordinary folks in their best, most ingenious moments." He liked "Los Angeles Against the Mountains" the most out of the three essays. He enjoyed how McPhee explained scientific and engineering concepts so a layperson could understand them.^[3]

Martin Ruess, writing in Technology and Culture , thought that McPhee should have added more interpretation to his descriptions. "McPhee has the poet's knack for the telling point, the metaphor that incisively leads to greater understanding," Ruess wrote. He believed that McPhee underestimated humanity's ability to exert its control on natural settings, since the U.S. infrastructure effectively did this. Ruess concluded that "McPhee's reports from the battlefronts are not as valuable as their implicit message that the control of nature is not nearly as important as knowing one's place in it."^[4]

Related Research Articles

The Mississippi River is the primary river, and second-longest river, of the largest drainage basin in the United States. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for 2,340 miles (3,766 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is 1,151,000 sq mi (2,980,000 km²), of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the thirteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure used to keep the course of rivers from changing and to protect against flooding of the area adjoining the river or coast. It is usually earthen and often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distributary</span> Stream branching off from main stream channel

A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel, a phenomenon known as river bifurcation. A distributary is effectively the opposite of a tributary, which is a stream that flows towards and into another stream or river. Distributaries are often found where a stream approaches a lake or an ocean; as such, they are a common feature of river deltas. They can also occur inland, on alluvial fans, or where a tributary stream bifurcates as it nears its confluence with a larger stream. In some cases, a minor distributary can divert so much water from the main channel that it can later become the main route.

John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World. In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

The Pearl River is a river in the U.S. states of Mississippi and Louisiana. It forms in Neshoba County, Mississippi from the confluence of Nanih Waiya and Tallahaga creeks, and has a meander length of 444 miles (715 km). The lower part of the river forms part of the boundary between Mississippi and Louisiana.

Bayou Teche is a 125-mile-long (201 km) waterway in south central Louisiana in the United States. Bayou Teche was the Mississippi River's main course when it developed a delta about 2,800 to 4,500 years ago. Through a natural process known as deltaic switching, the river's deposits of silt and sediment cause the Mississippi to change its course every thousand years or so.

The Atchafalaya River is a 137-mile-long (220 km) distributary of the Mississippi River and Red River in south central Louisiana in the United States. It flows south, just west of the Mississippi River, and is the fifth largest river in North America, by discharge. The name Atchafalaya comes from Choctaw for 'long river', from hachcha, 'river', and falaya, 'long'.

The Mississippi River Delta is the confluence of the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, southeastern United States. The river delta is a three-million-acre area of land that stretches from Vermilion Bay on the west, to the Chandeleur Islands in the east, on Louisiana's southeastern coast. It is part of the Gulf of Mexico and the Louisiana coastal plain, one of the largest areas of coastal wetlands in the United States. The Mississippi River Delta is the 7th largest river delta on Earth (USGS) and is an important coastal region for the United States, containing more than 2.7 million acres of coastal wetlands and 37% of the estuarine marsh in the conterminous U.S. The coastal area is the nation's largest drainage basin and drains about 41% of the contiguous United States into the Gulf of Mexico at an average rate of 470,000 cubic feet per second.

The Old River Control Structure is a floodgate system in a branch of the Mississippi River in central Louisiana. It regulates the flow of water from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya River, thereby preventing the Mississippi River from changing course. Completed in 1963, the complex was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a side channel of the Mississippi known as "Old River", between the Mississippi's current channel and the Atchafalaya Basin, a former channel of the Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hansen Dam</span> Dam in San Fernando Valley

Hansen Dam is a flood control dam in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, in the Lake View Terrace neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The dam was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District in 1940. Hansen Dam was named after horse ranchers Homer and Marie Hansen, who established a ranch in the 19th century.

The Atchafalaya Basin, or Atchafalaya Swamp, is the largest wetland and swamp in the United States. Located in south central Louisiana, it is a combination of wetlands and river delta area where the Atchafalaya River and the Gulf of Mexico converge. The river stretches from near Simmesport in the north through parts of eight parishes to the Morgan City southern area.

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The Los Angeles flood of 1938 was one of the largest floods in the history of Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties in southern California. The flood was caused by two Pacific storms that swept across the Los Angeles Basin in February-March 1938 and generated almost one year's worth of precipitation in just a few days. Between 113–115 people were killed by the flooding. The Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana Rivers burst their banks, inundating much of the coastal plain, the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, and the Inland Empire. Flood control structures spared parts of Los Angeles County from destruction, while Orange and Riverside Counties experienced more damage.

The Morganza Spillway or Morganza Control Structure is a flood-control structure in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is located along the western bank of the Lower Mississippi River at river mile 280, near Morganza in Pointe Coupee Parish. The spillway stands between the Mississippi and the Morganza Floodway, which leads to the Atchafalaya Basin and the Atchafalaya River in south-central Louisiana. Its purpose is to divert water from the Mississippi River during major flood events by flooding the Atchafalaya Basin, including the Atchafalaya River and the Atchafalaya Swamp. The spillway and adjacent levees also help prevent the Mississippi from changing its present course through the major port cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans to a new course down the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico. The Morganza Spillway, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was opened during the 1973 and 2011 Mississippi River floods.

Elliot City is a ghost town that was located in Pointe Coupee Parish's 10th Ward, approximately 6 miles west of Livonia, Louisiana United States. The site of the town itself is located at coordinates 30.555942, -91.662475, and is covered or partially covered by the current U.S. Route 190 roadway.

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The Sherburne Complex is a joint land management venture of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that began in 1983. The area consists of 44,000 acres (180 km²), and is managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The complex is located in the Morganza Flood way system of the Atchafalaya Basin about 30 miles (48 km) west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and actually extends a little south of the I-10 Atchafalaya Basin Bridge at Whiskey Bay, Louisiana. The bridge crosses the Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel. Located on the graveled LA 975, the west boundary is on the east side of the Atchafalaya River with the east boundary being the East Protection Levee. The complex stretches just north of old highway 190, and a short distance to the south of I-10. The nearest town is Krotz Springs to the north off US 190.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2011 Mississippi River floods</span> Major floods in the United States

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The West Atchafalaya Floodway is a flood control structure of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project located in the Lower Atchafalaya Basin in south-central Louisiana. It has a project design flood flow capacity of 250,000 cu ft/s (7,100 m³/s).

The Mississippi River Basin Model Waterways Experiment Station, located near Clinton, Mississippi, was a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire Mississippi River basin, covering an area of 200 acres. The model was built from 1943 to 1966 and in operation from 1949 until 1973. By comparison, the better known San Francisco Bay Model covers 1.5 acres and the Chesapeake Bay Model covers 8 acres. The model is now derelict, but open to the public within Buddy Butts Park, Jackson.

References

1 2 Pyne, Stephen (6 August 1989). "A War Against the World". New York Times . Retrieved 27 March 2015.
1 2 3 Sims, Norman (1996). "John McPhee" (PDF). Dictionary of Literary Biography, American Literary Journalists, 1945–1995. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
1 2 Miles, Jack (30 July 1989). "McPhee on Debris". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 17 April 2015.
↑ Ruess, Martin (April 1991). "Book Reviews - The Control on Nature by John McPhee". Technology and Culture . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 32 (2): 405–407. doi:10.2307/3105724. JSTOR 3105724.

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[Nyt-1] 1 2 Pyne, Stephen (6 August 1989). "A War Against the World". New York Times . Retrieved 27 March 2015.

[normansims-2] 1 2 3 Sims, Norman (1996). "John McPhee" (PDF). Dictionary of Literary Biography, American Literary Journalists, 1945–1995. Retrieved 31 March 2015.

[Lat-3] 1 2 Miles, Jack (30 July 1989). "McPhee on Debris". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 17 April 2015.

[ruess-4] Ruess, Martin (April 1991). "Book Reviews - The Control on Nature by John McPhee". Technology and Culture . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 32 (2): 405–407. doi:10.2307/3105724. JSTOR 3105724.

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