Encounters in a Salt Marsh

You never know who you’ll meet in a salt marsh. Tim Traver’s encounters range from the great grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to McMansion developers, to himself as a 12-year-old boy in a penetrating memoir, Sippewissett, or, Life on a Salt Marsh. To Travers, a tidal wetland has many meanings, and he carries readers along on a meandering kayak ride through the history of Wood Hole Biological Laboratory, failed efforts to preserve an original Cape Cod farm, the intimate lives of quahog clams, and much more. Here’s one paragraph that reflects the breadth of Traver’s approach:

“The marsh is a microcosm of the world. With its peat meadows, meandering tidal creeks, microbes and mud, at the living breathing edge of continent and ocean, it seems that life must have started here. Every microcomponent contributes to the whole. Discovering how this system works was a biogeocheical pursuit that took years and is ongoing. Hundreds of studies resulted in as many journal papers. Out of the research came a picture of energy and nutrient inputs, chemical transformations and outputs from the marsh. The human factor reduce to chemistry is in these equations—what is flushed down the toilet, pumped into the atmosphere, spread on lawns, and put into drinking water all goes into marsh, and all is measured. Where, though, is the factor of a famiy? A sacred community? The human spirit capable of sustaining the world? Where figures consciousness?”


The only time I willingly put Sippewissett down yesterday was to watch a new PBS documentary, Where Do the Children Play? The film examines how suburban sprawl, stranger anxiety, and technology have led to the decline in unstructured outdoor play among, especially and perhaps surprisingly, affluent children. Richard Louv, author of the best-selling Last Child in the Woods, appears often to elucidate what a lack of experience with nature does to the human psyche, and children themselves talk about why nature does (or in some troubling cases, doesn’t) matter to them. The goal of the film and its companion book, edited by play researcher Elizabeth Goodenough, is to stimulate the growing conversation about children’s access to natural space—and the time to enjoy it.


I think that books such as Sippewissett should be part of that conversation, reminding and exciting people about the innumerable values of ordinary places. By exploring a sometimes luminous, sometimes sulfurous local wetland with children, friends, mentors, and even adversaries, Travers demonstrates how each of us can become guerilla fighters on behalf of reconnecting each other with the natural world. As Travers asserts, a cadre of scientists, activists, artists, and philosophers have devoted their passionate lives to saving his marsh because they shared his love for it. But ordinary people can’t stand idly by others’ passionate flames if our favorite places are to be protected. “Emerson burned,” says Travers, “and made all of nature transcendent again. Science, infused with poetic insight, was his transformative agent. The scientists working to unlock the secrets of a salt marsh burned in their own way, too, and deep down hoped to save it all. But the few can’t save us. We all need to catch on fire.”

P.S. For a fine review of Sippewissett, see bookslut. She calls the book "truly lovely," and I concur.

Rock Flippin' 101

The first thing my family discovered, as neophyte participants in the second annual International Rock Flipping Day, is that we have a lot to learn about flipping rocks.

After all, there are so many choices.



Despite my son's tenacious efforts, some rocks resist flipping,



and many are too small to hide big secrets.



These and other frustrations today led my 13-year-old to bemoan that she'd have more fun if we could flip a rock star.



But our spirits were buoyed when we came upon a rock-related mystery on our trail--



Why did someone capture several pounds of small white stones and corrall them in the woods?

And at last we found a rock that was just right for the flipping tastes and talents of a nine-year-old boy.



What did we find under our long-sought, perfect flipping rock?



Our afternoon's search yielded one spider's web, innumerable pill bugs, decaying grass, general muckiness, and one sincere "Wow" from a "been there, done that" fourth grader. No epiphanies, but not bad for a bunch of beginners.

We'll be polishing our flippin' skills to improve our performance for the third annual celebration in 2009. Already, we've learned one important lesson: You never know what you'll find under a rock.

Rock Flippin' and other Fall Romps

It’s probably a symptom of spending most of my life somehow associated with school. But fall always seems like the start of things to me, and I’m feeling energized by the possibilities before us. Here are a few of my looming favorites. . . .

September 7th, Via Negative is co-sponsoring the second annual International Rock Flipping Day. Here’s how Dave describes the event:

On 9/2/2007, people flipped rocks on four continents on sites ranging from mountaintops to urban centers to the floors of shallow seas. Rock-flippers found frogs, snakes, and invertebrates of every description, as well as fossils and other cool stuff. As before, we advise wearing gloves for protection, and getting the whole family involved — or if you don’t have a family, rope in some neighborhood kids. Be sure to replace all rocks as soon as possible after documenting whatever lies beneath them.

If you participate, please take photos and send ‘em to Dave to share your discoveries. Then drop me a line to let me know which books most inspire you to undertake rock flippin’ adventures, wherever they are.


September 27, the Emily Dickinson Museum is sponsoring a poetry marathon at the Dickinson homestead and all around Amherst, Massachusetts. It’ll take about 16 hours to read all 1,789 poems; you can listen or volunteer to read. The Dickinson family, scholars all, were indefatigable readers, and the museum is determined to replenish the family library (most volumes were gifted to Harvard and other collections), Just skimming the family’s book list (which includes Pines Above Snow favorites such as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Wuthering Heights) is a treat, and you can pitch in to help re-fill the family’s shelves with a donation of an appropriate first edition or, always welcome, a cash contribution.


They’re giving books away over at 10,000 Birds, specifically copies of Nick Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa: A Novel.. Five copies of the Guide were donated by the publisher to spark awareness of Charlie’s 10,000 Bird campaign to raise funds for the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation,” principally aimed at protecting an endangered Kenyan bird, Sharpe’s Long Claw. The deadline to win a book may already have passed, but there’s plenty of time to contribute to protecting the birds. Donations will be accepted until October 1, 2008.

What nature book-related events are you excited about this season?

Kindling Interest?

One of my favorite periodic guides to more sustainable lifestyles is Sheryl Eisenberg’s This Green Life online column for the NRDC. But Sheryl sparked a controversy when she recently touted Amazon.com’s electronic reader, the Kindle. Eisenberg, like so many of us, not only loves to read but loves to accumulate favorite books, collecting them on shelves to surround her like cherished friends. Yet she increasingly questions the materialism behind such literary acquisitions and sees the Kindle, with its growing library of 120,000 fiction & nonfiction titles, plus top newspapers, magazines, and, yes, blogs, as a rational alternative.

Eisenberg argues that though reading via Kindle consumes electricity & contributes to pollution and global warming, harvesting trees to manufacture what too-often are disposable frivolities (think Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, not Bronte’s Villette) is worse for the planet. She finds plenty to praise about how Kindle works for her (inexpensive, print-like text, easily searchable), especially loving the convenience of nearly-instant downloads to random locations (imagine the delight if a new copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang could suddenly distract you during a long wait at the DMV). Amazon’s certainly doing its best to educate luddite-leaning readers to give the $359 device a chance. Anyone seriously considering purchase would do well to read the customer reviews for practical pros and cons of Kindle.


Eisenberg got so much flack for advocating a step away from traditional paper books that her next column encourages mail order book swapping instead (though it’s internet based too). Yet she doesn’t address questions such as how electronic book reading might impact nascent readers—a group that last Sunday’s Washington Post warns is less enamored of pleasure reading than ever. And it’s worth considering too whether one of the greatest virtue she perceives, rapid downloading, may be one of the device’s worst capabilities. After all, isn’t the need for instant gratification the core of materialism? Would Thoreau’s clarion call for a simpler life ring true if read off an e-reader(Kindle-Walden’s available for just $2.39!)? But maybe the powers in charge of the Kindle repertoire will resolve that kind of problem for us. So far, at least, they haven’t added A Sand County Almanac to their list.