Margins: A Naturalist Meets Long Island Sound - Hardcover

Buckles, Mary Parker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865475164 ISBN 13: 9780865475168

Publisher: North Point Pr, 1997

Synopsis

Small b&w photographs accompany the text by this former National Audubon Society editor, who simultaneously extols and fears for the future of the natural beauty of Long Island Sound. Considering that over 20 million people live within 100 miles of this 110-mile long body of water separating Long Island from the New York and Connecticut mainland, Buckles' ode to this apparently thriving, but marginally sustained, wetland ecology waxes optimistic despite the encroachment of development and pollution. As this is a personal natural history, no index or bibliography is included. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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Reviews

Raised in inland Mississippi, moving to the Midwest as an adult, Buckles yearned to live by the sea. When, in the late 1980s, she at last "landed" along Long Island Sound, she was "predisposed to like" what she would find there. But "like" is an uncharacteristically hazy word from this talented writer, who in her first book displays an ear for the exact phrase every bit as acute as her eye for the natural phenomena that she details and celebrates. Long Island Sound, which rests on the south along its titular land mass and on the north along the Connecticut shoreline, laps against some highly developed land. Yet Buckles discovers and explores world upon world of natural wonder within suburbia, grouping them sensibly into sections on "Land," "Air," "Water" and "Intertidal Zone." The range of wildlife she limns could fill a museum hall, from ospreys to sea squirts to raptors to barnacles, whose "tiny adult, which in some ways resembles a soggy Rice Krispie, is very intricately formed." This book is a first-rate natural history, but more, for Buckles views these creatures and the settings in which they live not only with the rigor of a scientist but with the good humor and passion of one who feels deeply a part of what she surveys. So in myriad anecdotes the text reveals the behavior of the author and her friends as well, as when, one May night, Buckles joins another naturalist to watch horseshoe crabs swim, then returns a few nights later to see them mate. The "margins" of the title refer to the margins of the Sound but, as Buckles makes clear, the life therein is in no way marginal, no more than is this gem of science writing, cut with lapidary skill.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A delicate, selective, and deeply personal natural history of Long Island Sound. When Buckles (Mammals of the World, not reviewed) found herself transplanted to the Connecticut shore some ten years back, she wanted to get to know the environment beyond its problematic reputation as a sewage-laden, pathogenic wasteland, its bounty contaminated. To her the sound was not diseased (indeed, it appeared to be on the mend), but rather ``a place inherently sacred by virtue of being alive.'' So she got down on her hands and knees at the water's edge, or pottered about in her little Boston Whaler, becoming intimate with the land- and waterscapes, knitting together the specialized habitats and communities that could be seen to flow into one another ``like watercolors left in the rain.'' Here she details 14 investigations of things natural that identify the sound for her: its glacial origins and geologic history, its coves and estuaries and its avian abundance--bufflehead and old squaw, mergansers, cormorants, ospreys, and many more. She marvels at the return of the oak, hickory, and tulip poplar forests, and pokes about the islands: grand Gardiners, tiny Fish, tern-colonized Falkner. She dredges for oysters, then tips back the catch, and catalogs the curious menagerie that populates a dock. And there is an extended meditation on the unique salt-marsh landscape, with its spartina, fiddlers, and pipers. Buckles's writing is careful and graceful, and she has a facility for investing the mundane with significance (barnacles, for instance) and clarifying obscure biological processes (like the mating of horseshoe crabs). Buckles tunes in to the habits and rhythms of her home shore and lets them nurture her spirit. ``Long Island Sound has a beauty and a vitality that leave me dumbfounded with love. These writings are my love letters.'' (line drawings, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Natural-history author and coastal Connecticut resident Mary Parker Buckles' latest work enables readers to share her immensely knowledgeable appreciation of the natural wonders of Long Island Sound. Buckles provides detailed scientific descriptions of the habitat and organisms of the sound, artfully woven with her personal observations, and enriched throughout with references to art and artists, music, poetry, literature, and mythology. With 24 million people living within 100 miles of the sound (an astounding 85 people per acre, most of them on Manhattan Island), human interaction with the area is intense. Yet emerging scientific understanding combined with political activism provide a basis for hope in the continuing regeneration of salt marsh wetlands and a number of at-risk species that inhabit the sound. Buckles skillfully reveals the essence of the sound's complexities within the intricately interwoven and overlapping margins of land, air, water, and intertidal zones. The book is a comprehensive exploration of the intriguing world of marsh muck and algae, shorebirds and migrants, bivalves and barnacles. Grace Fill

Edition details

• Publisher: North Point Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865475164
• ISBN 13: 9780865475168
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286