Margins - A Naturalist Meets Long Island Sound

Giroux : New York, 1998. Paperback. Fine/No Jacket. Margins - A Naturalist Meets Long Island Sound by Mary Parker Buckles Published by North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1998, ISBN#: 0865475326, Soft bound, New/Mint condition. Twenty-four million people live within one hundred miles of Long Island Sound, the 110-mile-long body of water that separates Long Island from Connecticut and New York's mainland. Yet the land, sky, and inter-tidal areas that Mary Parker Buckles explores in Margins, as well as the water itself, have remained virtually uncelebrated until now. While the Sound has been endangered by pollution and development, it is far from dead, as some picture it. Buckles' inspired explorations show that, in fact, it teems with life and is well worth our attention. With a deft touch and a naturalist's keen eye, Buckles introduces herself - and us - to this stimulating environment. Blending hard science with her own often whimsical observations, she discovers the magic of shorebirds on a stopover during their semi-annual migrations and comes to appreciate the temperament of owls, the intricacy of barnacles, the crusty horseshoe crab, and the fragile osprey chick. Buckles explains what the ongoing battle over wetlands is all about and elucidates the complexities of the place she describes as "inherently sacred by virtue of being alive." 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 "Inter-tidal 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.This is a delicate, selective, and deeply personal natural history of Long Island Sound. When Buckles (author of "Mammals of the World") found herself transplanted to the Connecticut shore, 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' writing is careful and graceful, and she has a facility for investing the mundane with significance (barnacles, for instance) and clarifying obscure biological processes. 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." The book is approximately 5 � X 8 � inches in size and contains 286 pages. The cover price is $13. Another copy of the book is currently offered on the Internet at Warrior Books for $23. Buyer pays minimal shipping - US Post Office Media Mail unless specified otherwise. If you have any questions please send me an email. Thanks for looking!