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Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook

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It's lines like that one, along with the lines of his excellent detailed artwork, which make me love the books of David M. Carroll so much. His latest, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook, shows and tells his annual observations from the first breaks in the ice through its reforming in a New Hampshire wetland.

The evocative opening page describes his winter pathways in his old house, amidst overflowing bookcases and paintings and art supplies. The words which follow, whether in the forty page title essay in which he describes his route through the wetland, a route you can follow on his detailed map inside the covers, or in a chapter consisting of a single paragraph, are like paintings themselves. You'll want to savor them with the same method he uses in his walks/wades: very slowly, with frequent stops.

Turtles are his first love, and there are many of them here: Spotted, Wood, Blanding's, Snapping, Painted. The early chapters are filled with more suspense than you might expect in such a book as he finds the first turtles of the year. He beautifully mixes his own emotions regarding individual animals he's observed for years with reflections on the never-ending processes of evolution and species interactions. His pain, anger, and despair result not from what occurs in nature but from the modern gods of "development" and "progress".

But it's not only turtles he observes and records. Many fish, insects, birds, frogs, snakes, and plants are also found in these pages. An encounter with a gray fox comes in a fine chapter in which he's exploring a suburban wetland on behalf of a group trying to stop further development, trying to remain out of sight from nearby houses and roads, the roads named after what used to be there--Trillium Way, Ferncrest Drive, Birch Lane. After describing his reluctance to do this because of past frustrations after doing this sort of fact-finding comes this wonderfully understated line: "There is also the fact that paid turtle work is uncommon and sometimes hard to turn down." He's not at all surprised when the police show up to watch him--having spent a lot of time wandering with binoculars and in various other fascinations with the natural world over the years, I could relate.

The final chapter raises the question of preservation vs. conservation in a very personal way for the author. Should some areas be left completely wild, not "saved" as parkland for people's recreation? Is there any room left on the planet for nature to be nature without human presence? To misquote a famous doctor, "Who speaks for the turtles?"

The merging of an artist's close observation of the natural world with a love for and need of that world, the emotions its destruction stirs in him, and his talent at putting all of that into words is a combination I can't resist. The man is my favorite living nature writer; it's not for nothing that he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" a few years ago. I hope you'll check out all his excellent work.

To those who know his work, David Carroll needs no review. But if you are new to this amazing naturalist's writing and art, this is as good a place to start as any. All of his books are inimitable slices of one man's passion for his slice of the world. When he writes about slogging through just barely thawed muck in April, I felt my toes getting numb with cold. When he finds his turtles wounded, I want to cry. And as he perseveres, and finds more to love than grieve in his world, I too am inspired to find the same. It seems only natural that he be nominated for the National Book Award, and disappointing, but in no way a reflection on the quality of his work, that the book didn't win. If you love the natural world, read David Carroll.

Surely, David Carroll's "Swampwalker's Journal" is among my very favorite books. Now, that book has been joined by "Following the Water," his latest collection of essays arranged as observed in the order of the seasons. In this more personal, more introspective book, Carroll retraces some of the same wet ground that he has covered in his previous books, but he includes broader observations as well.

After finishing its 186 pages, I found that I was left a little sad. I think that the precarious nature of the natural wetlands Carroll knows and loves so intimately came across in his earlier works, but the threat seems less veiled and more immediate in "Following the Water." Furthermore, on a personal level, Carroll seems fully aware of the increasingly short time he has remaining to continue to explore the wet world he loves so much, and he conveys that growing sorrow admirably.

Nevertheless, Carroll's writing remains as lyrical, poignant, and engaging as ever, and his stand on behalf of the biosphere has never been firmer.

This four-line poem by Wang Wei, which precedes the short essay entitled "Oxbow Meander," summed up the book for me:

Often on impulse, I walk out by myself:
Magnificent scenes, I alone know;
Walk to the source of the stream
And sit down to watch the clouds rise.

Although much can be said of the technical knowledge that David Carroll has of the wetland systems of the Northeast, reading his books is like taking a walk in those magical wetlands with a good friend. He manages to retain the intimacy of the natural setting while carefully teaching you things that you didn't know about them. I find in his books exactly what I find missing in most nature shows, and that is the sensual connection with the woodlands that I have enjoyed through my life.

Being here has brought me to a knowledge both tangible and ineffable, of a world apart, completely distinct, from that of my own kind. - David M Carroll, Following the Water.

The 'here' is the waterlands that the author has been wading in at certain times every year for almost 2 decades, watching and documenting the various turtles. Since most of them are the same ones, there is a meaning to his work, resulting in a study.

He overlooks the color blue of the sky in the water,to see what is under that. Much is being done by the way of conserving nature and wildlife, but we, the general public should find that 'world apart'.