E-Book Overview
David Carroll has dedicated his life to art and to wetlands. He is as passionate about swamps, bogs, and vernal ponds and the creatures who live in them as most of us are about our families and closest friends. He knows frogs and snakes, muskrats and minks, dragonflies, water lilies, cattails, sedges--everything that swims, flies, trudges, slithers, or sinks its roots in wet places. In this "intimate and wise book" (Sue Hubbell), Carroll takes us on a lively, unforgettable yearlong journey, illustrated with his own elegant drawings, through the wetlands and reveals why they are so important to his life and ours -- and to all life on Earth.
E-Book Content
Swampwalker's Journal: A Wetlands Year
David M. Carroll
Houghton-Mifflin Company
SWAMP WALKER’S JOURNAL
Books by David Carroll ’
DAVID M. CARROLL ........................................................................................................
SWAMPWALKER’S JOURNAL
A Mariner Book
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First Mariner Books edition 2001 Copyright © by David M. Carroll All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, Park Avenue South, New York, New York . Visit our Web site: www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carroll, David M. Swampwalker’s journal : a wetlands year / David M. Carroll. p. cm. --- --- (pbk.) . Wetlands — New Hampshire. I. Title. . .'' — dc - Printed in the United States of America Book design by Robert Overholtzer
For Laurette, Sean, Riana, and Rebecca
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book came to entail more time, pages, and turns in the road than I ever could have foreseen. I am grateful for the gracious patience of my editor, Harry Foster, and Houghton Mifflin Company. I especially thank Harry for his long-term commitment and, in the final stages, his editorial suggestions, which did much to clarify a manuscript in which the author himself became lost on more than one occasion. Peg Anderson’s attentive, perceptive copy editing greatly assisted the final phase. I am especially indebted to Brian Butler and Annie Burke for constant and generous soundings as I wrestled with this project and for deep information and perspectives on wetland ecology, evolution, and (of course) turtles. Sheila Tuttle, Margaret Liszka, Todd Aubertin, Edie Hentcy, Sy Montgomery, Gordon Ultsch, Michael Klemens, Carl Ernst, Jim Harding, and Scott Warren have been extremely supportive and have shared sites and/or insights as well as specific information that has been central to my knowledge of turtles and wetlands. A continuing inspiration in my work has come from David Holden, who died at an early age, early in the formation of this book. I have been fortunate to come to know and benefit tremendously from other outstanding field workers and wetlands advocates, and I deeply appreciate what they have done for habitat preservation as well as for the evolution of my own project: Margaret Watkins, Jamie Fosburgh, Mark Kern, Judith Spang, Kitty Miller, Joan McKibben, Trudy Loy, Laura Eaton, Anne Tappan, Sara Callaghan, Kim Babbitt, Sally Turtle, Jim Taylor, Barry Wicklow, Jaime Haskins, Alison Whitlock, Joan
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Milam, Tom Akre, Bill Brown, Nancy Bell, David Mauger, Bern Tryon, Tom Tyning, Brett Stearns, Carol Foss, Amanda Lindley Stone, David Brown, Barry Paterno, David Allan, Heather Behrens, Bill Niering, Laura Deming, Toni McLellan, Gordon Russell, John Kanter,