John McPhee · 1977 · overland

John McPhee's 1977 classic of Alaska, in three parts: a wilderness float trip through the Brooks Range above the Arctic Circle, the search for a site for a new state capital, and a long, intimate portrait of the people of the upper Yukon around the town of Eagle. Less a single journey than a deep immersion in the last American frontier and the wild, contrary souls drawn to it, it is among the finest books ever written about a place.

1. 1
   Salmon River

   McPhee is flown by bush plane into the Brooks Range, far above the Arctic Circle, to float a wild, clear river through country with no roads and no people, only caribou, grizzlies and the land itself.

2. 2
   Kobuk River

   Down to the Kobuk and the Eskimo villages strung along it, where the old subsistence ways meet the coming of the modern world.

3. 3
   Susitna Valley

   South to the forested country between Anchorage and Fairbanks, where surveyors and dreamers hunt for the site of a brand-new Alaskan capital that will never be built.

4. 4
   Eagle

   And east to the tiny settlement of Eagle on the upper Yukon, among the trappers, miners and fierce independents who have come into the country to live by their own rules.