Rising from the Plains
This is about high-country geology and a Rocky Mountain regional geologist. I raise that semaphore here at the start so no one will feel misled by an opening passage in which a slim young woman who is not in any sense a geologist steps down from a train in Rawlins, Wyoming, in order to go north by stagecoach into country that was still very much the Old West.
This is how John McPhee's Rising from the Plains begins. If you enjoy reading about geology, this is a fantastic place to start. If, on the other hand, you're not interested in the science's spatial intricacies, you can lose out on a richness of human history that exists within the layers presented. Geologists are sometimes considered to reflect the type of nation they grew up in in their professional skills. That is especially evident in the life of a geologist who was born in the heart of Wyoming and reared on a remote ranch.
This is the story of that ranch, which was established just after the turn of the century, and the geologist who grew up there, at ease with the high country's composition in the same way that someone growing up in a coastal harbor would be at ease with the sea's whims. While Rising from the Plains is a portrait of amazing individuals, it is also a history of the region surrounding them, in which mountains sprang out of the flat ground with incredible speed. The mountains were gradually submerged, until only the highest peaks could be seen over a huge plain. They were recently unearthed and are now known as the Rockies.
John McPhee's third book on geology and geologists is titled Rising from the Plains. It continues to provide a cross section of North America along the forty-first parallel, following Basin and Range and In Suspect Terrain, in a series titled Annals of the Former World.
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