Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh

By Tim Traver

Book Overview

Tim Traver's Sippewissett is heir to a rich history of nature writing. Akin to classics like Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the book forms an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933392142
• ISBN13: 9781933392141
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Salt Marsh Philosophy

Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is almost holy ground if you are a biologist. Founded by Louis Agassiz, it has seen many of the greatest biologists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, including Lynn Margulis and E. O. Wilson, among many others. Sippewissett Marsh is close to Woods Hole and as such is one of the most studied of all salt marshes. Like most wild or semi-wild places, salt marshes are nearly magical (if a scientist can use that term). My main memory of a salt marsh is of a spartina marsh along the Gulf Coast of Florida on a botanical field trip, during which we often sank in the mud while trying to reach some rare or unusual plant. Also by happenstance I passed close to Sippewissett on a trip to Martha's Vineyard via Falmouth Harbor. Thus I have at least a slight acquaintance with the ecosystem and the specific area involved. Tim Traver has now published a enchanting account of Sippewissett, simply titled "Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh." It is a delight to read and probably one of the best collections of nature and philosophy essays that I've seen in recent times. Traver certainly loves the area. This comes across with every paragraph. Here he fishes, does research for conservation work, watches birds, and generally makes observations of life and the human interaction with the salt marsh as a microcosm of the human interaction with the natural world. He fishes with a fundamentalist who tell him nature is too high in complexity to have evolved, he discusses Agassiz and his association with the marsh, Lynn Margulis' and James Lovelock's ideas of Gaia, and he brings to reader face to face with the results of oil spills, hurricanes and other destructive forces in the salt marsh. The discussions are humane and interesting. His style is in no way polemic and he comes across as a person who is genuinely interested in the marsh and the opinions of other people, whether he agrees with them or not. This is a truly rare commodity in today's constant drone of absolute opinions. I highly recommend this excellent collection of essays on one of the most endangered and productive ecosystems on the planet.

The Modern Bible - creation, prophets, and neighbors

We bought four more copies for friends and family. Our UU minister is building a service around just part of this. Add our emphasis on the incredible continuous dedication to researching life of this marsh over 75 years starting with Rachel Carson.

Sippewissett: A universal reflection of life

Tim Traver writes with grace, humor and insight. He tells the compelling story of a small salt marsh on Cape Cod - where he, his family and friends spent endless summers discovering the world and themselves. His story blends intimate memories of growing up - fearless and curious - with science history and the broad progress of ecological inquiry. Readers are drawn into a thoughtful journey that reveals our place in the living, still-breathing world. Traver's salt marsh is transformed into a harbinger of the planet's health. We learn that everything we do matters.

Wonderful story

Traver's stories in Sippewissett make the progression of environmentalists in the Eastern United States a tale of interest, rather than one of dry history. And the recounting of Traver's childhood, young adulthood, and recent visits to the magnificient marsh bring this place and its inhabitants of all kinds to life. I can almost hear the birds cry and feel the slimey smoothness of the fish. What a wonderful read. I've even shared some of the passages with my teenage son. Such a delightful book!

Finding Soul in a Salt Marsh

From the opening sentence of Tim Traver's Sippewisset, you can tell that the author has spent a great deal of his life attuning to the rhythms of Nature. There is a rhythmic, undulatory quality to his prose, echoing the ebb and flow of water, wind, and wondrous life that is the perennial pulse of his beloved Sippewisset salt marsh. Beloved. Be loved. The tradition of American nature writing might be said to ever and again utter this adjective and this injunction. American places have been celebrated by nature writers because they are beloved by the writer, whose words then invite us readers to love them as well. The act of loving a place is usually in nature books a wholly affirmative undertaking, risking at times and often succumbing to a saccharine sentimentality. Traver's Sippewisset keeps us listening to a muted but undeniable voice of negation as counterpoint to the author's reveling in beauty and slack-jawed marveling at biological process. There is a bit of the ascetic monk in Traver; the lean voice of the desert haunts his reveries about making a home on this good green earth of ours. One hears in Tim Traver's voice a relentless questioning of the ways that natural science knows this well-studied wet spot on the sand margin of Cape Cod. Along with the lively pictures he gives us of scientists past (like Louis Agassiz & Rachel Carson) and present (John Teal, Lynn Margulis, and others) at work in the field, Traver constantly communicates his own inner landscape as he seeks to answer the driving question of the book: "How do we save both the soul of a place like Sippewisset and our own souls?" Soul is a quality more endangered on this marshy planet than even the most fragile wetland, and the beauty of this book is that as deeply and intelligently as it penetrates the microbes in the mud of Sippewisset, Traver always puts the smelly stuff in service to the messy muds of our modern alienated minds. And as serious business as this soul-making search for sacred stewardship gets, we feel him always at play. The ten-year-old hunter of crabs and clams is never far away from the seasoned chronicler of biological process. Seasoned. Sipewisset's seasons -- carried particularly by its animal denizens -- are of course here. And so are the seasonings of tasty prose inspired by the sheer fecundity of the place. But the reader will quickly come to feel that for all of his boyish wonder and playfulness, Traver is fully seasoned, his reflections upon Nature and Life warmed by the practicality that mature humanhood will convey upon any earnest participant in the mystery of life. Go walk and talk and play with him in his favorite place on Earth. Kevin Dann Department of History Plattsburgh State University author, Lewis Creek Lost & Found; Across the Great Border Fault; Traces on the Appalachians