65 pages • 2 hours read
John McPheeThe Control of Nature
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay 2
Essay 2: “Cooling the Lava”
Essay 2: “Cooling the Lava”
Red-hot lava from a volcanic eruption threatened a town in Iceland in January of 1973. Physicist Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson proposed cooling the lava—much to the skepticism of other Icelanders. McPhee notes that, in Iceland, people are known in official records by their first names. Iceland established a Civil Defense Council in 1962 and immediately gr concerned with the appearance of layers of red lava in the Atlantic Ocean. McPhee writes, commenting on the role of the Civil Defense Council, “Behind thick concrete walls and steel anti-radiation doors […] Iceland directs the war against nature” (96).
Heimaey is the largest of the islands of Vestmannaeyjar, which contains 2.5 percent of Iceland’s population but produces a significant portion of its exports, primarily through the fishing industry—especially on Heimaey. The lava threatened not only the town but that sector of Iceland’s economy. Men followed Thorbjorn’s approach and attempted to cool down the lava by watering it.
McPhee visits Vestmannaeyjar more than a decade after the lava eruption, and steam still rises from the lava. The ash on the ground is cool to the touch but hot underneath. McPhee describes the glassy surface of lava and the bulldozers required to break it. McPhee speaks with Sigurdur Jonsson, who worked as a store clerk at the time and assisted the crews guiding the bulldozers. Sigurdur describes his memories of the intense heat on the ground, including boots shrinking when exposed to the heat. The seawater intended to cool the lava left a dense fog that made it difficult to see and for the men to operate bulldozers. Sigurdur likens the fight against the lava to serving in a war. Sigurdur mentions that he and the other workers used American Army helmets to protect them from falling ash and molten lava rocks or “bombs.”
Pages 103-112 Summary
McPhee turns to the physicist mentioned previously, Thorbjorn, who proposed cooling the lava. Although Thorbjorn studied atomic energy abroad, he returned to Iceland, where most scientists study volcanoes. After witnessing an eruption in an area called Surtsey, in which the lava cooled upon reaching the sea, Thorbjorn wondered whether man could similarly cool lava. After the eruption in Heimaey, Thorbjorn went to the island to take measurements. Thorbjorn spoke with firemen on the island about his idea, and he wrote to the Civil Defense Council. He received no response from the Civil Defense Council, but the firemen assisted him. They gathered hoses and fired water at the lava. The water succeeded in halting some of the lava. The remaining lava progressed toward the houses on the island.
Thorbjorn concluded that they must douse the lava with water from the top. The Icelandic fire chief of an American base, Sveinn Eiriksson, led much of the operation to fight against the lava. Patton helped Thorbjorn put his cooling theory into practice, though one approached the matter from a scientific perspective and the other from a managerial perspective. The danger grew as the volcano rose to nearly 400 feet and bombs weighing thousands of pounds crash into the land.
The wind shifted the ash toward the ocean, but it left the town with a covering of thick black snow. Many of the houses burned to the ground; some of the remaining houses’ frames collapsed due to steam. Following an encounter with a frightened catfish, a French volcanologist—Haroun Tazieff—said there is no hope for Heimaey. Eleven days after the eruption, dense ash mixed with rain, obstructing the view of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Volcanic bombs fell amidst the ash. Flowing lava enlarged the size of the island by 2,000 feet. Fourteen days after the eruption, it reaches a new fury, spewing lava 1,000 feet in the air. February 5 lives in infamy as Black Monday—a day when it seemed everyone had given up hope of quenching the lava.
Pages 112-130 Summary
The author describes a mural on the side of a guesthouse in Heimaey, which shows the eruption of the lava—and the chaos that followed—on January 23, 1973. The residents of the island received little warning prior to the eruption. Small earthquake-like tremors hit the island the night before, which a seismometer—owned by Einar Einarsson—detected. Einar notified the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik. The Civil Defense tried to map the radius of the tremors. Fifteen minutes before the eruption, a large tremor hit the town. The islanders did not panic but nonetheless fled the area by boat. Some islanders never returned. McPhee interviews residents of the island about their recollection of that morning.
The author compares the falling of ash or tephra on Heimaey to the falling of ash that destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii following the eruption of Vesuvius; in both places, ash crushed the houses. Eldfell is the name of the new volcano that emerged in the wake of the eruption on Heimaey. McPhee cites a passage from Pliny the Younger, whom many volcanologists credit for his descriptions of eruptions during ancient times. An eruption of explosive fragments—like the one in Heimaey—is known as a “Plinian eruption.” The eruption in Heimaey began near an idyllic farm called Kirkjubaer. The author includes sketches of Kirkjubaer and other dwellings on Heimaey in this section. He describes a monument to a pastor, Jon Thorsteinsson, who was killed by Moroccan pirates who came to the island in 1627. Removed from the town during the eruption, the monument survived, then was returned to the island afterward.
McPhee looks at the monument with local resident Magnus Magnusson, who discusses childhood fears as well as daily threats, not just from the volcano, but also from people falling to their deaths while foraging for food and from boat crashes. McPhee concludes that the people of Vestmannaeyjar have endured difficulties from living in such a harsh environment and have done their best to combat it. McPhee highlights the Magnus’s extraordinary accomplishments, which include numerous political leadership positions, including a stint as mayor of the town. Thorbjorn told Magnus that they must choose between defending the town and defending the harbor, and Magnus chose the harbor, as it forms the backbone of the town’s economy. Magnus had to dig through tephra to get to his family’s house, which he restored after the eruption.
Pages 131-140 Summary
As the eruption continued for weeks, the lava began to encroach on the harbor. Thorbjorn brought more pumps, but he received little support from the center of government in Reykjavik. Patton arrived from the mainland of Iceland to assist with efforts. The townspeople coined a term, Vestmann Island disease, to describe people like Patton who felt a compulsion to stay on the island and help. Carbon dioxide gas entered the town, making it difficult to breathe. Journalists Osvaldur Knudsen, Knudsen’s son, Villi, and Villi’s wife, Lynn Costello arrived to film the eruption. Villi likens the scene in Heimaey after the eruption to a war zone. Costello and Villi recount their memories of the eruption, including their love story. Costello says, “It sounded like Hell, with those huge lava bombs hitting the windows” (134).
The growing volcano had risen to 700 feet by February 18. On this day, a molten spring formed near the bottom of the volcano. The north side of the volcano came loose, destroying 30 houses in an avalanche. This avalanche sped up the overall lava flow. McPhee states that several factors shaped the island’s future over the next few months, among them an increased threat to the harbor due to the new lava flows from the avalanche. The water pumping crew became desperate. Thorbjorn, Patton, and others on the ground called upon a commercial ship for extra help in the cooling operation. They succeeded in stopping the lava from going over the harbor wall, but the enormous north side of the volcano—which split off during the avalanche—floated in the sea. The floating volcano receives the nickname “Flakkarin the Wanderer.” Flakkarin floated dangerously toward the harbor. Thorbjorn and the town devised a plan to stop Flakkarin. They planned to cool the lava in Flakkarin’s path, allowing seawater to seep into the lava as it cooled and cracked; the seawater would reach the molten lava core and help solidify it. They poured 30 million gallons of seawater into the area. Flakkarin approached but eventually broke up into pieces.
Pages 141-159 Summary
The Icelandic government sought out more high-powered pumping equipment, especially as a new “lava tongue” emerged following the breakup of Flakkarin. The new lava flow directly hit the town, wiping out up to 18 acres in a day. The pumping operations continuously retreated further back into the island to avoid loss of equipment due to the advancing lava. The lava took down dozens of houses; some residents cleaned their houses before the lava hit so they’d go down in their best condition. Meanwhile, the seawater pumped to stop Flakkarin was an enormous mass 100 feet thick, leading townspeople to wonder if their efforts in cooling the sea mass might have inadvertently shifted the flow of lava into the town. McPhee concludes that it is likely that human intervention had altered the course of the eruption. McPhee discusses other hypothetical options that were considered in addition to the cooling, such as bombing the volcano. McPhee quotes the United States Geological survey in saying that the cooling effort on Heimaey was “the greatest effort ever attempted to control lava flows during the course of an eruption” (144).
McPhee details a few failed attempts by mainland outsiders to control lava flows in Hawaii. Native Hawaiians traditionally give offerings of food and flowers to appease the god Pele, whom they believe to be responsible for the natural disasters in the area. Since lava flows are intense and regular in this part of Hawaii, the locals have come to accept them as a way of life, limiting their expectations for how much they can contain natural disasters. After the fairly successful cooling scheme in Iceland, the Army Corps of Engineers debated whether to build a dam to create a reservoir that it could tap in case of future lava flows. Patton went to Hawaii at the behest of Harry Kim, director of the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency. Like Patton, Kim would bear the responsibility of controlling lava flows should they drift into Hilo Harbor in Hawaii. Kim says that Patton and his team controlled only small portions of the lava flow—not the main flow—in Iceland. Kim says they must weigh financial costs with moral responsibility in such a situation. Kim found the Army Corps’s plan to be ridiculous. McPhee notes that most scientists believe the Mauna Loa volcano will destroy Hilo at some point in the future. Kim carries a grievance against volcanologists for what he believes is fear-mongering.
The author offers a brief summary of the eruption of the Kilauea volcano in January of 1983. As a result of the eruption, the desolate terrain surrounding that area in Hawaii bears a strong resemblance to volcanic areas of Iceland. There are differences between Kilauea and Heimaey, however—namely, that Heimaey is a dormant volcano years after the eruption, and Kilauea is almost always active. McPhee accompanies volcanologists—including Christina Heliker—to a site called Camp 8, where lava has recently frozen. The terrain in this area is a type of glass-like solidified lava rock, which he likens to the consistency of peanut brittle. McPhee crashes through the glassy rock. Lava in Hawaii does not typically explode, unlike the lava in Heimaey. McPhee approaches the lava lake by helicopter; Heliker expresses the danger of a helicopter falling into this lake. McPhee breaks off a volcanic rock with a hammer and observes the heat surrounding him.
Pages 159-179 Summary
McPhee writes that “Iceland and Hawaii in a sense are twins” due to their geophysical activity (159)—known as a “hot spot”—which causes heat from deep within the Earth to release into the atmosphere. McPhee compares and contrasts the movement of tectonic plates beneath Hawaii and Iceland. Kilauea in Hawaii continues to build upward due to this movement, and a new island is likely to rise as well. Eastern Iceland is moving east along with Europe, but western Iceland is moving west along with North America. Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is the volcanic region of Iceland. A 1783 eruption in Iceland killed a third of the population in the area. The Reverend Jon Steingrimsson led parishioners in a prayer that came to be known as the Fire Mass. When Reverend Jon opened the door, the lava had stopped, halted by river water cooling it. In 1973, as lava flow approached the city once more, a pastor held a service in a church much like the Fire Mass centuries prior. McPhee notes that the lava flow—which he calls City Flow—stopped at the fort that was built centuries ago following the attack by Moroccan pirates, or “Turks” as the locals them.
Once cooled, the lava on Heimaey built up into a hill next to the town. The townsfolk turned the cooled lava into a natural monument with benches. Tour buses came to town. The new lava added 20% more land mass to the town. Magnus said the community of Vestmannaeyjar owned the new land. After the lava cooled, Magnus lost his bid for reelection. Others in the town attributed his loss to the roughly 1,200 new residents who had arrived, as well as the departure of many of the lava evacuees, who never returned to the island. The arrival of new residents and departure of old ones morphed the island’s culture. Cooled lava and new homes replaced the island’s greenery. McPhee describes the two volcanoes in the area, Helgafell—the old volcano—and Eldfell—the new one. An old man returned to Vestmannaeyjar and could not believe this was his old home due to the presence of the completely new volcano that had risen. Marriages broke up as some chose to stay in mainland Iceland and others returned to the island.
The lave eruption narrowed the island’s harbor to 500 feet wide. Many residents say that the lava flow has made the harbor better and also improved the natural heating of the town. McPhee chats with a fisherman earning good money out of the harbor. McPhee observes a boy and a girl near the harbor. The boy lets loose a puffin—an iconic bird in Iceland—that dives for fish in the sea. It is common to catch and release baby puffins, but the people of the island also consume adult puffins. McPhee notes that cooling five million cubic yards of lava cost $1.5 million, but the town has also received tens of millions of dollars in unanticipated benefits from the lava, including new paving materials for streets due to the tephra falling from the volcano.
McPhee turns back to the cooling operation; he adds in a detail about American pumping crews arriving with military-grade pumps 10 weeks after the eruption. McPhee describes the pumping process. The pumps cooled the lava for approximately 100 days, but new lava appeared on Easter Sunday that flowed into the sea for more than two months. It is fortunate that the Easter Flow happened to head in a direction that damaged no property, but Thorbjorn hypothesized that the flow’s direction was due to their cooling operation, which made certain areas of cooled lava more stable and less susceptible to new flows. Their cooling effort may have saved the town after all, though Thorbjorn admits that they got lucky. On July 3, Thorbjorn declared the eruption to be over.
Essay 2 Analysis
In “Cooling the Lava,” like the previous essay, McPhee instructs readers on how to pronounce unfamiliar words, as the typical reader may be unfamiliar with the Icelandic language; for example, “Heimaey is pronounced ‘hay may’” (97). Specifics like pronunciation help ground the reader in an unfamiliar place. Details also guide the reader in acclimating to the atypical environment. McPhee sprinkles in details, like the fact that Sigurdur wears oversize boots and three pairs of wool socks to prevent heat from overwhelming his feet or the mention of housewives digging into the ash and baking bread due to its heat.
Moreover, McPhee provides concrete numbers, an addition that serves as a testament to both his research and his desire to impress upon the reader the unprecedented nature of the pumping operation: “Sandey’s equipment could spew out six thousand gallons a minute” (137). He also compares the scale of the pumping operation and the lava flows to more tangible concepts and places that an American reader might better understand. For perspective, he draws a comparison between the pumping of water on Heimaey and the flow of the Niagara Falls: “six million tons of water pumped on the lava—the equivalent of turning Niagara Falls onto the island for half an hour” (107). McPhee also compares a volume of basalt to stop Flakkarin to “the size of Yankee Stadium” (140).
McPhee sets the scene for the horrors unfolding in Iceland through grim, dystopian imagery. An example is this quote from an Icelandic resident who observes a catfish and takes its reaction as a fitting symbol of the terrifying natural disaster on Heimaey: “Tazieff had awakened to see a catfish swim up to the glass and open its mouth in ‘a silent scream of terror’ […] He read in the face of the catfish that all nature had been shaken to its foundations” (111). McPhee also highlights the absurdity of the situation and notes how people would find a way to exploit Heimaey’s troubles for their own financial gain: “A high-fashion model landed on the island, was photographed on the black ash against the fires of the volcano, packed up, and flew away” (111).
Descriptions of the hellish, almost other-worldly terrain on Heimaey come to life in McPhee’s writing. He makes literary references to mythical creatures like Cerberus, which guards the gates of hell: “From a panoramic attitude, they were bright specklings of white-orange in the silvery-black surface of the stream. If the helicopter hovered close enough, you could see Cerberus” (154). There is also beauty in this unfamiliar landscape, which McPhee captures through visually stunning language: “As lava moves, under the air, it develops a skin of glass that is broken and rebroken by the motion of the liquid below, so that it clinks and tinkles, and crackles like a campfire” (98).
This descriptive prose appears in the form of simile throughout this section. Each simile serves a purpose. In this simile, McPhee compares two items that would not normally be in the same sentence—stewed chicken bones and ashy houses—to convey the destruction the volcanic eruption has wreaked on Vestmannaeyjar: “Eventually, some of the ash-covered houses filled with steam and were cooked until their frames came loose like the bones of stewing chickens” (110-11). Similarly, McPhee discusses the various ways lava can manifest in Hawaii by using similes. Lava can pool like tongues or move like sails: “We were next to it—to hot red tongues like tide pools, to a mass of jagged fins moving downhill like sails” (158).
McPhee continues to use war as a metaphor for the effort to combat the environment. He discusses how the cooling operation must retreat from the lava’s advance, much like an army retreating from an enemy force: “You had to withdraw. You retreated, retreated until you were too close to the supply line; then you moved the supply line” (101). However, not all local residents support such militaristic-style efforts to tame their surroundings. McPhee uses Hawaii as a counterpoint to Iceland in this essay. He comments on how the Hawaiians are not as concerned with fighting the lava in their backyard; instead, they have adapted to the situation and accepted that there are some things outside of their control. In fact, it is entities like the Army Corps that come to Hawaii and urge the residents to act: “It should be mentioned that these historic efforts to do battle with lava in Hawaii were few in number, futile in nature, and not conceived by Hawaiians” (145).
Similar to the previous essay, McPhee provides illuminating character introductions, such as his first impression of Sigurdur Jonsson, a Heimaey native who volunteers to help with efforts to save his town: “Sigurdur apologized frequently for his English, which he spoke at about the level of the average American professor” (101-02). This line speaks not only to Sigurdur’s humble nature, but also McPhee’s position as an American in Iceland. The Icelandic villager assumes that McPhee will judge him more harshly for his level of English. In another character introduction, McPhee writes of Harry Kim, who runs the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency: “Harry is an intense man, serious and dedicated, slim to the point of being weightless. Deep is his love of the terrain” (150). This second line sets up Kim’s dedication to his job, which McPhee expands upon in subsequent paragraphs.
We see a clash in mindsets between two of the primary actors in this chapter: the scientist Thorbjorn and the military leader Patton. Their differing worldviews mirror the civilian versus military dilemma in the previous essay on Louisiana: “Thorbjorn, the archetypical scientist, was full of conceptual alternatives. Patton preferred ideas to report for duty one at a time. When Patton asked ‘Does it work?,’ Thorbjorn would say ‘It will do no harm’” (110). However, unlike in Louisiana, the civilians and the army band together against a common enemy—the lava—in Iceland.
McPhee shares depictions of Iceland that convey the country’s traditions and regulations, some of which may seem unusual to the reader. McPhee notes that in Iceland, beer is prohibited “in the interest of national health […] In a somewhat paradoxical country, this is a savory paradox” (102). These asides about Iceland imbue the essay with rich local flavor. Additionally, McPhee delves into the local history of Vestmannaeyjar with tales of Christian leaders and foreign invaders. Graphic illustrations in this essay—such as the image of a farm called Kirkjubaer—showcase the beauty of the island prior to the eruption. McPhee also comments repeatedly about the hardiness of the Icelandic people.
Although Iceland is strict about beer, the country is laxer when it comes to safety regulations. Whereas McPhee must sign waivers before approaching recently cooled lava in Hawaii, he can freely walk on glassy lava that is boiling hot beneath the surface in Iceland without any issue. Moreover, on the island in Iceland, the community leases its land, so there is no issue when it comes to deciding who owns the new land formed by the lava: They all own it collectively as a community. Given the massive bureaucracy and focus on the individual over the collective in the United States, McPhee finds this community cooperation remarkable: “I remarked to Magnus that sorting out such a thing in the United States would take three hundred and fifty years” (166). McPhee also notes the paradoxical Icelandic approach in which residents catch and release cute baby puffins but consume them once they are adults: “Touching is the scene when the chicks are released, but as adults they are caught and eaten” (175).
Similar to other forms of literary reportage, McPhee applies craft techniques commonly used in fiction and applies them to his nonfiction writing. One of his techniques is pacing that gives the book an almost movie-like quality at times. In cinema, there is oftentimes an all-is-lost moment just before the movie’s climax, when it seems the hero has all but lost the fight against the bad guy. McPhee describes one such moment during Heimaey’s cooling of the lava. It seems like the town is lost: “Complete pitch-blackness enveloped the town at noon. Five million tons of lava were now in motion, closing the distance to the harbor wall” (112). We soon learn that the town has been saved. Part of that pacing comes from the non-linear format of the story. McPhee uses section breaks to separate the narrative and jump back and forth in time. He starts the essay later in time with the lava cooling, then backs up to the initial eruption.
McPhee structures the order of the three essays in the book to make the maximum impact on the reader. The first chapter also allows McPhee to establish the power of the Army Corps, which returns in the second chapter. It also allows the reader to contrast the approach of the Army Corps in the first chapter with the attitude of the Icelandic and Hawaiian residents in the second chapter. Unlike the people of southern Louisiana, Icelandic residents have grappled for centuries with the harsh conditions of their chosen home, and doing so has made them sturdy in their battle against nature:
In other words, the people of Vestmannaeyjar, who were emblematic of the people of Iceland, had lived since the year of settlement in the endless presence of disaster. They had obviously not been dissuaded by it, and had learned to subdue their residual fears. No matter how overwhelming a situation seemed to be, if there was any possibility of fighting back they had done so, and this seemed to have produced evolutionary effects, expressed in the battle against the lava (126).
A supporting anecdote follows McPhee’s conclusion about the hardiness of the people, and anecdotes appear in every section of this chapter. Perhaps most noteworthy is Magnus’s tale of the swimmer who survives a shipwreck and swims hours to reach Vestmannaeyjar. Magnus—mayor of Heimaey at the time of the lava eruption—does not find this account of the swimmer to be that extraordinary, though McPhee clearly does. The purpose of the anecdote of the swimmer is to show how Magnus perceives the world, and how that worldview makes him a capable leader during this time of crisis.
Additionally, these anecdotes demonstrate the humanity—and human emotions—of people within these extraordinary circumstances. For example, a filmmaker couple has recently moved to Heimaey to document the situation, and the wife—who is not Icelandic—has become fed up with the situation. She begins carving out a message in the snow stating “I HATE YOU” to her husband, only to feel sympathy for him. She then changes her message to “I LOVE YOU,” which ends up soothing her husband’s nerves (135). Another anecdote about a long-time, elderly resident of the island gives a sense of how jarring it would be to have one’s homeland so fundamentally altered in such a short period of time. He remarks on the sudden appearance of a mountain due to the recent volcanic activity: “If I am in the Vestmann Islands, what is that mountain doing there?” (170).
McPhee’s trademark dry humor is present in this essay. He describes the bunkers of golf courses in Hawaii, which are built upon hardened basalt, unlike the sandy bunkers of most golf courses. He imagines trying to hit a ball into one of these very natural bunkers: “If a long approach shot lands on one of those, it bounces to Tahiti” (152). McPhee also selects humorous quotes from his interview subjects, finding levity in every situation. For example, when Christina Heliker realizes that her boots are too small, she says, “Once they melt a little, maybe they’ll fit” (153), even though most of us would be more alarmed at our boots melting than their not fitting properly.
This quote also speaks to the persistent irony in this section. McPhee highlights this irony most prominently in the Icelanders’ aversion to potential foreign Muslim invaders—whom they call “Turks”—even though it has been centuries since Moroccan pirates came to their shores. They also have a much more imminent threat: the volcano. McPhee cites a fort that was built centuries ago to ward off returning invaders: “The fort has stood symbolic for three and a half centuries, and the Turks have not returned” (163). The lava, however, does return. Although the fort does not serve its purpose in stopping Moroccan invaders, it serves another equally important purpose in stopping the lava flow that would otherwise have advanced on the town. It is also ironic that an event—the lava flow—that nearly devastates the town also brings significant improvement to the area by repaving roads and reshaping the harbor: “The lava brought more than thirty million dollars’ worth of heating to the town, and harbor improvements worth a great deal more” (175).
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