Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is far more reflective than I expected. I've read a lot of Pete Dunne's books and his anecdotes and clear, engaging writing style make them great reads . And while this book has the same writing qualities, it has a bittersweet nostalgia and a rather serious theme through a series of otherwise buoyant encounters and stories.
Where I expected this book to be a straight forward natural history of the Delaware Bay, it reads like a memoir of a maturing naturalist marking the changes of his birthplace. He celebrates the beauty and wildness of this surprising Eden in the shadow of a sixty million people, but he can't help noting that this is a changing paradise. And like many maturing naturalists he understands that this Eden is not untouched wildernesses, but a balance that man has been a part of for generations.
But now, this bayshore balance of man and nature is dying by degrees, and Dunne documents this death through shorebirds and farmers and poachers and fishermen and star light. All of which are suffering the human pressures of our most densely populated state. He explores the sliding baseline where we are generationally losing our touch with what was or could be. He explores dozens of viewpoints and facets like charter fishing where a single legal sized fluke now marks a good day, where once it would have been bushel baskets of weakfish. He also marks where a waterman now flirts with profitability, hoping his take of crab and fin fish outweighs the cost of taking his boat out of the harbor.
While this all sounds like a downer, Dunne sweetens it all with his joy of nature. Where weakfish disappear from the bay, osprey return. Where once there were tens of thousands of knots, there is still the beauty of hundreds. Where there is nature, you can still find hope and awe.
For me, the most moving part of this book is Dunne's marking of how far we have moved from our relationship with nature. It was Frightening to hear him quote Dallas Sharp, another local naturalist from another century. Sharp saw this movement away from nature and implored boys to take 10 mile adventures into the woods, and now I don't know that children can survive a 10 mile hike. Like the balance of the Delaware Bay, our engagement with wild areas is dying by degrees, and without it, our expertise and understanding are disappearing. I'm glad Dunne marked it to help us remember what was and can be.
I'm heading out to pick up Prairie Spring: A Journey Into the Heart of a Season tonight.
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