Travels+in+Georgia+AP

“Profiles: Travels in Georgia”, The New Yorker, 28 April 1973 Andréa Peters

In “Profiles: Travels in Georgia”, McPhee first introduces the two main characters of this piece while describing a breakfast scene in Sam’s pick-up truck. Carol and Sam, two biologists who work for the Georgia Natural Areas Council, had invited McPhee to join in on their trips throughout Georgia. The 50 something pages story starts off when Carol spots on the road a snapping turtle that has been hit by a car.

A few other locals stop by to give their thoughts on what Carol and Sam should do with the turtle, and McPhee mocks the local Sheriff for standing 12 inches from the turtle, and still needing three shots before actually aiming correctly and succeeding in killing the turtle. As readers, we’re acquainted with Carol (20 something years old) and Sam’s (40-ish coworker) custom of laying their “Dead On Road” creatures out to decide whether or not they are fresh and in a sufficiently good condition to be sliced up and bagged, and eaten for dinner.

After having read the detailed descriptions of how exactly she takes the turtle’s eggs and meat, I had completely forgotten why they were doing this to begin with. So as I re-read, it became clear that on top of being biologists, Carol and Sam are also ecologists who travel all over Georgia to do research on the animals they find on the roads, and to convince people who own really precious kinds of land with all sorts of nifty creatures to register their lots in the “to be conserved areas” protected and governed by the State of Georgia. Carol also replenishes the specimens for the Georgia State University collection.

Interested in snakes and frogs, Carol and Sam ask around at the Bryan County Courthouse for directions to find the “frog project”, and end up far into thick woods, where a worker from the Soil Conservation Service, a sub division of the United States Department of Agriculture, is clear-cutting large amounts of woods. McPhee describes how impressively efficient and precise Chap Causey’s eighty-two tons machine is, and we learn a great deal about stream channelization. Though you can get a sense that Carol is saddened for all the snakes and frogs that will lose their natural environment, McPhee nonetheless presents the “positive” factors the establishment of channelized establish.

McPhee then goes on to talk about several other D.O.R Carol and Sam examine and bag up for lunch, and they eventually get to Carol’s house, which is about 4 miles away from the nearest little village in the area they are in. Carol lives in this little house alone, and it is apparently in need of a good coat of paint. Astonishingly enough, McPhee writes “Carol had about fifteen ecosystems going on at once in her twenty-by-twenty house.” Amongst many, she houses a red-tailed hawk, a seagull, a colony of beetles, a lot of snakes, a baby hawk, a rooster, a frog, and Zebra, who a poisonous rattlesnake whom she keeps in an empty mayonnaise jar. I think what I found most extraordinary in this piece is that McPhee never once lets his readers know whether or not he’s okay with eating all these dead animals right off the road. He does at one point ask Sam how they tell how old the body of a road kill is, and Sam responds something along the lines of “Who cares how old it is? If it tastes good, giddy up!” There are a few indications that McPhee is slightly reserved about trying some of these things, but he sneaks his discomfort with humour such as when he answered “extremely well done”, when asked by Sam how he likes his weasel.

Not a single judgment is passed about Chap, Carol, or Sam; and it’s really neat that McPhee actually gets his hands dirty in the field and eats, sleeps, lives, and travels with them by car, plane, and canoe. And this, for quite a period of time. I always wonder how McPhee ends up knowing when he has reached the point where he has gained "enough" of the knowledge he deems necessary to write a satisfactory piece. I always end up feeling pretty reverent toward McPhee’s work, and I think that aside from a lot of peculiar and interesting learning, his fascination of the people he profiles is what he wants his writing to convey the most to his readers. You can also sense the deep friendship and mutual understanding Carol, Sam, and John share.

Regarding the kinds of things McPhee pays attention to, and the overall organization of the profile, this piece seems fairly congruous to many patterns we have almost established as “typical McPhee” over the course of the semester, so I’ll not spend much time on that in this review. in sum, though, he does use a great deal of in-depth descriptions, a researched kind of language, quick and unpredictable changes in topics, and some humour to disguise discomfort as well as some surprise.