Travels in Georgia

"Automobiles that morning were backed up at least a mile from the Newark Airport tollbooths (fourteen tollbooths, fourteen lanes), and the jam was just as thick on the paid side as it was on the unpaid side--thousands and thousands of murmuring cars, moving nowhere, nowhere to move, shaking, vibrating, stinking, rattling, Homo sapiens D.O.R." --John McPhee, page 26

I love this sentence because it brings humans "down" to the level of animals--although animals aren't exactly presented as below us in this piece. I loved this piece! I had only read a little bit of it by class on Thursday (oops), and I had to finish it. John McPhee does a beautiful job of showing us environmentalism, true environmentalists at work and in love with the land and animals. The way he paints a portrait of Carol is amazing, and there are so many layers, about human impact on the Earth, about the ways that some people still really do care...and he says it all without telling us directly. And of course, there's a bit about the culture of Georgia mixed in there, too. McPhee doesn't really tell us his views on these issues prior to his trip with Sam and Carol, but he doesn't have to. You can sense the change in him through his writing; brilliant. This piece makes me excited about being a writer, and hopefully a better environmentalist one day. That's what good writing should do, it should paint a picture so clear to the reader that they feel as if they can see it, and want to see more.