Praise
"Sippewissett is a rare book as it both informs and entrances. A delight from beginning to end."
â??Booklist, Starred Review
"In this wonderful blend of natural history and memoir, Traver details both the ecology and the history of Sippewissett, describing the people and creatures that he encounters, and chronicles the daily turning of the tides. Educational, touching, and highly relevant in today's changing ecological world, this marvelous book is highly recommended."
â??Library Journal, Starred Review
"This lovely book made me miss a bus. The sounds of the motor
and the opening doors were lost in the ebb and flow of saltwater,
migratory fish, and family, and in Traverâ??s combination of humor
and natural history with a deep meditation on the ecology of
home."
â??John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home
"Rarely can so much be so happily learned. Tim Traver takes us deep into the microcosm of Sippewissett, but more so, explores with us the idea of home. Trevor leaps into his salt creek home and where it takes him is never dull."
â??Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and
Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land
"Tim Traver's Sippewissett is a brilliant accomplishment replete with
insight, wisdom, understanding, and passion. The author marvelously
combines natural history, science, culture, conservation, and enduring
qualities of the human spirit. The reader is continually moved by
Traver's eloquent blending of personal narrative and rational
reflection; we find ourselves traveling with the author through his
coming of age cum personal and professional odyssey. This is a book
that is likely to endure, enrich, and inform for many years to come."
â??Stephen Kellert, Tweedy Ordway Professor of Social Ecology, Yale
University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
"Sippewissett is a salt marsh with history, and Tim Traver is an ideal guide who steers his readers through layers of birth natural and human, personal and expansive. The science of home is a noble pursuit, and Cape Cod has spawned some of our finest literary naturalists. With Sippewissett Traver joins the legacy of gifted seaside storytellers John Hay, Henry Beston, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Finch."
â??Ted Levin, author of Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida
Everglades, winner of the 2004 Burroughs Medal
"Tim Traver's Sippewissett speaks to us about matters of extreme
urgency and does so in a voice we want to hear. It's a powerfully
smart and likable book."
â??David Huddle, author of The Story of a Million Years
"The road home leads through dirt, mud, saltwater and sand in this wonderful, storytelling book about a man and a salt marsh. It is lovely to read a book in which deep reflection on self, science and community are woven with direct, lived experience. Traver conjures with portraits of scientists and naturalists like Louis Agassiz and George Perkins Marsh, for whom science pointed to truths deeper than calculation can reveal. And he himself gently enacts their wishes, drawing truth from a girl who sees a pipefish or from a family expedition in a boat that floated in on the tide."
â??William Bryant Logan, author of Oak: The Frame of Civilization and Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth
"Tim Traver has written not just about a salt marsh, but also
about the experience of living near one. He reflects upon what
othersâ??scientists, poets, philosophers, relatives, local residents
and even occasional visitorsâ??tell him about Sippewissett marsh. And,
while the book is focused on his marsh, it is really about a
manâ??s relation to nature on a large scale."
â??John Teal, co-author of Life and Death of the Salt Marsh
"Sippewissett is simply a beautiful piece of nature writing, an extended love letter for
a particular place, a particular Cape Cod salt marsh."
â??Gary Lawless, Gulf of Maine Books
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