2002 Medals and Awards

GSA PUBLIC drive the pickup he had rented. As we John is a hugely talented careened from roadcut to roadcut, I kept wordsmith, who is able to grasp diffi- SERVICE an eye peeled for the California cult concepts—in a field in which he AWARD Highway Patrol (we never did get was never trained—and make them busted). I tried to explain the geologic come alive. For example, in Presented to John A. McPhee mess of the Sierra Nevada and Coast “Assembling California” John was able Ranges, while McPhee pelted me with to juxtapose the history of the questions from the passenger’s seat and California Gold Rush and the Loma wrote furiously in one of his many Prieta earthquake with intricacies of notebooks. California geology in a way eminently accessible to non-geologists and useful In person, McPhee is a soft- to geologists at the same time. He is a spoken, gentle, considerate, compas- master at putting his subject out front, sionate, invariably polite person. He’s a and himself in the background. really nice guy. He is also the most for- midable interviewer I have ever en- McPhee’s geology works form countered. John soaks up knowledge only a small part of his efforts. Over the like a sponge. He can quietly, grace- years, he has published and received fully, and skillfully extract from an un- awards for some thirty books on such suspecting interviewee the most arcane diverse subjects as nuclear hazards, the details of whatever subject is under dis- Swiss Army, the New Jersey Pine John A. McPhee cussion. The process is hard work and Barrens, Scotland, orange-growing, occasionally dangerous if you are driv- traveling on a freighter, and most re- ing. I remember at the end of one day in cently, The Founding Fish (on the Citation by Eldridge Moores our early travels together, I blurted out species American shad). However, John McPhee is one of, if not “I’m exhausted. You’ve really put me McPhee has developed a deep under- the, greatest living American non-fic- through the wringer.” He responded, standing of geology, and a remarkable tion author. In fact, he has been called “How do you think I feel? This stuff is ability to translate that understanding in one of the best nonfiction writers, ever all new to me.” terms accessible to the layperson. Four of his other books deal partly or largely (see The Globe Corner Bookstore, A few years later we went to with geologic themes: Coming into the www.globecorner.com/a/596.html). Cyprus and northern Greece, and subse- Country (on Alaska), The Control of quently to Arizona. We revisited Born and raised in Princeton, Nature (on human attempts to modify California sites a decade later, and we N.J., John was educated at Princeton natural processes), and Encounters with traveled along part of the San Andreas and Cambridge Universities. Since the Archdruid (travels with the late fault after the 1989 Loma Prieta earth- 1965 he has been associated with the ), and Irons in the Fire (a quake. Over the course of these travels, New Yorker magazine as a staff writer. collection that includes a long piece on our relationship blossomed into a life- I first met John in November 1978, as a forensic geology). result of a telephone call from Ken long family friendship. I certainly feel Deffeyes of . Ken enriched, personally, by knowing him. John has brought geology alive to a public thirsting for more informed me that McPhee was begin- John’s assembled work on knowledge of the Earth. The reactions ning a study of the roadcuts of I-80 and geology, Annals of the Former World to McPhee’s writings demonstrate the asked if I would help with California. was a best-seller and won the Pulitzer hunger his readers have for knowledge While I had never heard of McPhee, I Prize for General Nonfiction in 1999. about the Earth and the landscape readily agreed, as the project sounded He worked on this book on-and-off around them. interesting, and it was along a route that over a 20-year period during which I had used many times for student field four of its sections were published in Through his many writings, trips. Thus began the long road to magazine. Two of John has made “geology” a household “Assembling California.” these parts, “Basin and Range” (on word. I cannot think of a more deserv- McPhee arrived on a Friday Nevada and New Jersey), and ing recipient of the GSA Public Service afternoon, and we went out in the field. “Assembling California” were them- Award. We are lucky that such a tal- Our modus operandi was for me to selves best-sellers. ented writer got interested in geology. It

The Geological Society of America 2002 Medals and Awards

gives me great pleasure to introduce meant. My own notes were over my way from geologists has been warm to him to you. John McPhee. head. In the course of time, and further an unexcelled extent, and this evening I dialogue with Anita and other geolo- have — as noted — the best chance I’ll gists, those notes gradually became ever have to express my heartfelt appre- Response by John A. McPhee clear. Anita, like every other geologist I ciation. would talk to, understood what I had set As I have occasionally re- out to do, did all she could to help me marked in the past, it has not been my Thank you, Eldridge. Thank get there intact, and devised ways to purpose to write for a scientific audi- you, GSA. Last spring, I was asked to communicate with my innumerate ence but my purpose would be defeated write a formal acceptance speech for mind. She and everyone else in the pro- if my work were not acceptable to sci- this occasion, and acceptance is exactly fession had no difficulty understanding entists. The corroboration implied in what I wish to mention in more than that a piece of writing can take forever. this award is an award in itself. one sense. For me, this is an unparal- When I met Eldridge Moores, he had leled opportunity to register my grati- just turned forty. His children were so tude to the geological community as a young you could see the scuff marks whole for your acceptance of my pres- where they crawled on the rug. Over ence among you and for your unending the years, as I made field trips with patience in teaching me, guiding me, Eldridge, his children grew up, went to encouraging me, and correcting me in a college, and soared on into the world project that must have seemed quixotic while the guy with the notebook, who to those of you who were close enough first appeared in their home in 1978, to judge. For example, Anita Harris, of had still written nothing about their fa- the United States Geological Survey — ther, his ophiolites, and his beloved on the first day of my first field trip California. With the late John David with her, in 1979 – was walking upsec- Love, of the USGS, my lag time was tion through the Delaware Water Gap, only eight years — eight privileged pointing out the nuances in the Silurian years of learning from him – and the in- quartzites. I said, “Do you ever get tired tervals were analogous with Karen of teaching ignoramuses?” She said, “I Kleinspehn, now of the University of haven’t worked on this level since I Minnesota, and Randy Van Schmus, of don’t know when.” the University of Kansas. At the outset, before I had so much as collected Rock Academically, about all I had No. 1, Kenneth Deffeyes, of Princeton behind me was an undergraduate de- University, volunteered to shepherd me gree in English literature. In college and through the whole of it, recommending in high school, I had taken various in- and introducing other geologists, going troductory courses in physics, chem- with me himself across the Basin and istry, biology, and geology, but only out Range, and enlisting into the advisory of idle interest or to discharge distribu- process most of Princeton’s Department tional requirements. As a forty-seven- of Geosciences and members of this year-old professional writer, I was at- profession in many parts of the United tracted to geology, I guess, by the States, England, Scotland, and Canada. humanistic implications in its scientific Because my work as a non-fiction facts, the marvels and the metaphors in writer has been delimited and defined its descriptions of the world. Among the only in its being about real people in mangled ripple marks in quartzite, an real places, I have ventured into highly affection for marvels and metaphors varied fields of endeavor, experiencing, will not get you very far in figuring out as you might guess, highly varied levels which way is up. On that first outing of welcome. In the federal and state sur- with Anita, I scribbled a large quantity veys, in the academic world, and in pri- of notes, and when I typed them up a vate companies large and small, the ac- few days later I did not know what they ceptance that I have felt coming my

The Geological Society of America