The Uncontrol of Nature

• Author: Oliver Houck
• Pages: 27-33

27

The Uncontrol of Nat ure

By Oliver Houck

The Swamp: The Ever glades, Florida, a nd the Politics of Paradise ,

by Michael Grunwald. Simon & Schu ster. 480 pages.

Bayou Farewell : The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Loui siana’s

Cajun Coast , by Michael Tidwell. Penguin Random House. 38 4 pages.

From the January/ February 2007 issue of

The Environmental F orum.

The control of nature is what humans do.

It a nd the thumb a nd the number of

wrinkles on the brain are what separate

us from other creatures, and over time we have

graduated from merely exploiting natural forces

to subduing them with wa lls and machines,

the technology of transcontinental railroads,

cities below sea level, and deserts that bloom.

ese are heroic stories and they have produced

a stream of celebratory literature, larger than

life gures battling intemperate climates, ckle

politics, and personal animosities to achieve yet

another benchmark. We may make mistakes,

but in the end we always seem to win.

Two classics of this genre are John Barry’s

Rising Tide and John McPhee’s e Control of

Nature, and they succeed as documentaries

and compelling writing. Both describe the

eorts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to

keep the Mississippi River in place against all

history, and with no small amount of brink s-

manship. If we lost a few battles, it only made

victory more impressive. We were conquering

the river. Had Barry and McPhee shifted their