A Place Between the Tides: A Naturalist's Reflections on the Salt Marsh

Front Cover
Greystone Books, 2009 - Nature - 240 pages
For every nature writer there seems to be one special place that tutors him or her in the ways of nature and the relationships of humans to the natural world, including the spiritual dimension. For Thoreau, it was a pond; for Henry Beaton, a barrier beach; for Annie Dillard, a creek. For Harry Thurston, it is the salt marsh, that part of the planet where land meets sea.

Based upon childhood memory and his naturalist’s journals, "A Place Between the Tides" is the story of Thurston’s return to the beloved environment of his boyhood when he moves to the Old Marsh, a 1.5-hectare marsh on the banks of the Tidnish River in Nova Scotia. Elegantly moving back and forth in time, from the present year through the past decade and all the way back to childhood, the book describes the seasons in the life of the marsh as filtered through two decades of Thurston’s living there. Blending acute analysis and a poet’s lyricism, Thurston explores and examines one of the most productive and biologically diverse habitats on Earth, a habitat that has been degraded relentlessly since European settlement, making the few standing marshes precious because they are so vulnerable and vital.

About the author (2009)

Harry Thurston is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction. Tidal Life: A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy garnered all three Atlantic region book awards in 1991, including the Atlantic Booksellers’ Choice Award, and The Nature of Shorebirds: Nomads of the Wetlands won the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Award, in 1997. Thurston’s articles have appeared in Audubon, National Geographic, and Canadian Geographic, and he has served a contributing editor and field correspondent for Equinox since its inception in 1981. He lives in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

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