We live in denial of the world the science of home is carefully sketching for us. The full picture isn’t there yet, but what we can see is clear enough to act on. [p. 41]

Sippewissett, Or, Life on a Salt Marsh [2006, Chelsea Green Publishing, 264 pages; illustrated by Bobbi Angell)] by Tim Traver is not your everyday science book, even with its illustrations. Nor, is it the latest polemic on global warming. It is a science book grounded in the everyday actions of man and the slow ebb and flow of tides in and around the area of the Sippewissett Salt Marsh in the lower Buzzards Bay area of Massachusetts; an area where the Traver family has had a summer house for generations. Here, Traver, an environmentalist, spends the better part of a year exploring, examining, researching, and ruminating on the nature of man and of man in nature, all wrapped up in the life cycle of the salt marsh.

Traver’s task in Sippewissett is two-fold: an examination of the earth science and issues surrounding the salt marsh and man’s interactions with it, and a studied reflection on man’s place within the natural world; what he refers to as the science of home.

The Sippewissett salt marsh has been studied for years by the marine biologists and earth scientists of the nearby National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Marine Fisheries in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Throughout the book, Traver neatly intersperses his personal exploration and investigation with that of the experts, giving the reader a science lesson amid his reflections, a historical perspective amid his memories, and a personal discussion of man’s responsibility and stewardship as it relates to the environment around us.

Because the Traver family has summered on the marsh for years, the book also reflects on the author’s youth in the marsh, and Sippewissett also functions as a memoir. And, in writing a book of science with a bit of memoir attached to it, Traver also sketches a book as something of a call to action in relating the life on the marsh as it is now, as it was in the past, and what might be lost in the future. No discussion of environmentalism can avoid the fact that man’s actions have imperiled the future of his interaction with nature. The marsh that Traver writes about has seen the effects of man’s actions. Fertilizer runoff, wetland development, and fossil fuels have taken a toll on the ecology of the marsh and its future is in doubt.

A salt marsh is a very fragile ecosystem and serves as incubator and regulator of the larger areas around it. With the ebb and flow of the tides, the salt marsh comes to life. Many species live in and around the salt marsh, and it serves an especially important function in its care and feeding of young fish and other marine life that starts there before moving on to other areas. Its fish and grasses serve important masters, and the salt marsh should be respected and protected for the greater good.

Part of the reason that the Sippewissett marsh appealed to Traver as a study point (outside of it being his summer home) is that its small size (I believe it is 500 acres or less) lends it to manageable exploration and natural inquiry. And, its small size can be extrapolated onto other areas. If this is what is happening on a small salt marsh in Massachusetts, think of what is occurring in larger coastal regions with the same problems of encroachment, pollution, erosion, and nitrogen/nitrate overloading?

Traver writes rather eloquently on the question of man’s stewardship of nature and much of his ideas and beliefs stem from his Unitarian/Universalist background. I suppose it’s fair to say that he sees the eye of the Creator in nature. And, he approaches the spiritual side of nature with an open mind, a conservationist passion, and a touch of Emerson at work in his writing.

He writes about the concept of home throughout the book, from both a scientific one and a spiritual one. He grapples with questions of home throughout. The personal is never too far away and it the personal that drives much of the discussion throughout the book. What will we leave for our children? What is our purpose in this life as it relates to the next? These questions drive his ideas for a marriage of the spiritual and the natural, the duality of man’s place in the world, and the need for educated stewardship of the earth.

To take care of land first, you have to make it, figuratively speaking, your own. Penetrate it beyond the facts of it. Find its secret light in you. Second, learn what stewardship requires. Third, save those calms. Fourth, pass it on [p. 185]

Traver admits he doesn’t have all the answers. But he does have very firm ideas on man’s responsibilities with nature. He sees the science and the spiritual working together to get it right for future generations.

Why not a new and sophisticated creationism to command our most loving thoughts and mindful actions toward self, others, the world? Science, then, becomes one way to act out our deepest values. [p. 239]

However, we define home, wherever it is, however we carry it – in clams, or in reasoned analysis in the lab, in mud, in words, in the consciousness we are becoming, or in God – it is our calling to find it. Our home place is the stage for our metamorphosis. That would appear to me, now, here by the fire, to be the only thing that really matters. [p. 241]

Sippewissett was not my usual library pickup, but once I started it, I felt compelled to finish it even though I haven’t picked up a biology book in decades. Though I did get bogged down in some of the scientific discussion at times, Traver’s passionate discussion of the history of the salt marsh and the early beginnings of American environmentalism kept me going.

And, I think his take on the idea of the spiritual meeting the natural world was an especially well-crafted and important point to consider as, perhaps, an embrace of Emersonian conservation is the way to go forward with any discussion concerning environmentalism, conservation and global warming issues.

Sippewissett is an interesting and personal reflection on the questions of man in nature without the tidy answers (three stars).

Sources
www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/sippewissett
www.buzzardsbay.org/falmouth.htm
http://www.tagzania.com/item/35775
http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/nhesp/natural_communities/pdf/saltmarsh2006.pdf


Recommended: Yes