Humphrey+Spiritual+GD

Garrett Derrah Humphrey, Theodore. John McPhee’s Spiritual Journeys: The Authenticating Eye. Humphrey writes this article with an air of respect and admiration towards McPhee, and his ability to take his readers along with him in his writings. In this article Humphrey comments on the sheer spirituality within McPhee’s writing, even though McPhee himself never says whether or not it is spiritual. Analysing many of his articles on geology, Humphrey talks about how McPhee is able to not only look at sites and describe them to the reader with perfect detail, but also able to portray to the reader the feeling of looking at time itself. It is in this sense that Humphrey believes McPhee to be a deeply spiritual writer who is able to connect with his subject on such a deep level, and then reproduce this feeling to the reader of the article. In McPhee’s articles regarding geology he more often than not uses the language of science, as discussed in class. McPhee brings the reader into the world of the subject, and expects that we will gain interest enough to search other sources to find the exact meaning. It is through this that Humphrey explains that McPhee must have a lot of passion in writing to be able to keep our interest when using the language of the science, when he knows his demographic is not exactly up to the scientific par. In searching for answers concerning geology in these articles, McPhee expresses his desire for knowledge of existence and portrays this to the reader. As Humphrey says, Clarifying the mind-bending contrast between the eye-blink time of our species’ existence and it efforts to “control” nature, on the one hand, and the great and nearly incomprehensible travels of tectonic plates, the rise and fall of mountain ranges, and the opening and closing and reopening of oceans and seas, on the other, McPhee’s pilgrimages testify to that divine light in the human mind which seeks always to illuminate the facts of our existence (166). It is to Humphrey’s astonishment that McPhee is able to relay this feeling to his writers. This article continues on to hold McPhee in high regard for his ability to “construct his fellow readers as fellow travellers”, and go into great enough detail that you can picture every stone, tree, river around you as he writes them. McPhee is also able to bring to light the researchers that he goes along with. He writes about them in factual ways that resemble something from an action movie, bringing them to almost hero-like status through their actions. Humphrey ends by saying that McPhee’s ability to write so vividly not only comes from his education, but his powerful connection with the physical world that brings about this spiritual writing. In his writing McPhee is able to almost surpass the information given in the actual rock and present the world in its entirety, through time and space.