Encircled+I+DD

Devika Dadhe A reporter at large- The encircled river I

The first thing that struck me was how McPhee has to use very little words to get the reader's emotions stirring up. Two lines, used in the right context, delivers all the right messages: "My bandanna is rolled to the diagonal and retains water fairly well. I keep it knotted around my head, and every now and again dip it into the river.....A cloud, all black and silver, crosses the sun. I put on a wool shirt". These two lines conveyed two completely different weather conditions by simply describing his actions of dipping the bandanna in the river and wearing a wool shirt.

There also seems to be a pattern that I noticed. It seems as though McPhee starts his article with a very small, mundane thing which in this case is talking about his bandanna. He then expands into more details- why he's wearing the bandanna and dipping it in the river. Then a little more- he's at the river because he's fishing. And some more- he's fishing in a large river, which has a current, called the Salmon river which is situated in Brooks Range in Alaska.

The pattern, to an extent, was repeated in "Pieces of the Frame" too. First the road, then the location of the road, then the purpose of the journey and so on.