Walking The Wrack Line

This final volume in the author's trilogy, which began with Stirring the Mud and Entering the Stone gives nature writing a human dimension and throws light on the mysterious and overlooked wonders on beaches as far-flung as Morocco, St. Croix, or Alaska, and as familiar as California and Cape Cod.

The wild, remote, and sparsely populated shores of the Oregon Coast are shrouded in beauty and mystery. Replete with natural wonders, it's a land on the edge. One where the seas meet the trees, and anything is possible. In this volume the authors of Sterncastle Writer's Collective take you on a literary journey along the hiking trails and coastal headlands, out to sea and back, as they explore not only this majestic place they call home but also themselves, their neighbors, and the millions of visitors the Oregon Coast welcomes every year. Whispers Amongst the Trees is a witty, wholesome, complex, and at times terrifying window into a place and a people which are well worth a deeper look.

The Jersey Shore attracts millions of visitors each year, drawn to its sandy beaches. Yet New Jersey’s coastline contains a richer array of biodiverse habitats than most tourists realize, from seagrass meadows to salt marshes to cranberry bogs. Beaches, Bays, and Barrens introduces readers to the natural wonders of the Jersey Shore, revealing its unique ecology and fascinating history. The journey begins with the contributions and discoveries of early naturalists who visited the region and an overview of endangered species and natural history, followed by chapters that explore different facets of the shore’s environments. These start with sandy beaches and dunes and culminate in the engaging Pine Barrens, the vital watershed for much of the state’s varied coastline. Along the way, readers will also learn about whaling, decoy carvers, an extinct duck, and the cultivation of wild blueberries. Including over seventy color photographs, the book also features twenty-three infoboxes that go deep into areas of ecological or historical interest, such as the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge or the Jaws-like shark attacks of 1916. From Cape May to Sandy Hook, biologist Eric G. Bolen takes you on a guided tour of the Jersey Shore’s rich ecological heritage.

Edited by John Wilks, this is a fine selection of both poetry and short fiction that represents the very best writing from 12 weeks of The NOT The Whittaker Prize 2013. Contributors from the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA

Moving from fable and historical fiction to contemporary realism, this book of stories from Barry Lopez is erotic and wise, full of irresistible characters doing things they shouldn't do for reasons that are mysterious and irreducible. In "The Letters of Heaven," a packet of recently discovered 17th-century Peruvian love letters presents a 20th-century man with the paralyzing choice of either protecting or exposing their stunning secret. When some young boys on the lookout for easy money get caught with a truckload of stolen horses, thievery quickly turns into redemption. For a group of convicts, a gathering of birds in the prison yard may be the key to transcendence, both figurative and literal. And, with the title story, Lopez enters a territory of unmitigated evil reminiscent of Conrad. Here are saints who shouldn't touch, but do; sinners who insist on the life of the spirit; a postcard paradise that turns into nightmare. Light Action in the Caribbean has already been hailed by Russell Banks as "tough-minded, emotionally turbulent, and always intelligent." E. Annie Proulx describes these stories as "subtle and mysterious" and says that a reader "cannot leave Lopez's fictional territory unchanged." This is a book that breaks exciting new ground for Barry Lopez.

A poignant, candid chronicle of a beloved nature writer’s fifty-year relationship with an iconic American landscape. Those who have encountered Cape Cod—or merely dipped into an account of its rich history—know that it is a singular place. Robert Finch writes of its beaches: “No other place I know sears the heart with such a constant juxtaposition of pleasure and pain, of beauty being born and destroyed in the same moment.” And nowhere within its borders is this truth more vivid and dramatic than along the forty miles of Atlantic coast—what Finch has always known as the Outer Beach. The essays here represent nearly fifty years and a cumulative thousand miles of walking along the storied edge of the Cape’s legendary arm. Finch considers evidence of nature’s fury: shipwrecks, beached whales, towering natural edifices, ferocious seaside blizzards. And he ponders everyday human interactions conducted in its environment with equal curiosity, wit, and insight: taking a weeks-old puppy for his first beach walk; engaging in a nocturnal dance with one of the Cape’s fabled lighthouses; stumbling, unexpectedly, upon nude sunbathers; or even encountering out-of-towners hoping an Uber will fetch them from the other side of a remote dune field. Throughout these essays, Finch pays tribute to the Outer Beach’s impressive literary legacy, meditates on its often-tragic history, and explores the strange, mutable nature of time near the ocean. But lurking behind every experience and observation—both pivotal and quotidian—is the essential question that the beach beckons every one of its pilgrims to confront: How do we accept our brief existence here, caught between overwhelming beauty and merciless indifference? Finch’s affable voice, attentive eye, and stirring prose will be cherished by the Cape’s staunch lifers and erstwhile visitors alike, and strike a resounding chord with anyone who has been left breathless by the majestic, unrelenting beauty of the shore.

The Cape and Islands--Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket--provide some of the best walking and hiking in coastal New England. There is a great variety of terrain and scenery, from the crashing Atlantic Ocean to pristine kettle ponds, from densely wooded tracts to open expanses of salt marsh, and from sandy shorelines to wildflower-carpeted grasslands. Walking the Cape and Islands is the first comprehensive guide to the area's best walking and hiking trails. In includes: 72 walks ranging in length from 0.4 miles to 11.2 miles and in difficulty from easy to difficult; for each walk, a complete route description, driving directions to the trailhead, and a detailed, easy-to-read map; at-a-glance Info providing essential information such as distance, difficulty, time to walk, trail surface, and more; trail-use data showing whether bicycles, dogs, or hunting are allowed on the described route; and health stats showing the number of steps and estimated calories burned. Although designed primarily for walkers and hikers, this book will also appeal to joggers and mountain bicyclists. The book is illustrated with photographs by the author, a professional photographer.

The story of a mother and daughter in an idyllic Cape Cod town... On a freezing January night, LaRee Farnham answers a knock at her door to find a policewoman holding three-year-old Vita Gray, whose mother has just been murdered a few miles away. LaRee raises Vita with fierce love and attention, at the same time trying to shield her from the aftermath of the murder, which has deeply divided the histoiric village of Oyster Creek. Born out of wedlock, Vita is the product of the town's two very different cultures: the hard-working fishing families of Portuguese descent and the "washashores" from the mainland, who've drifted to the coast for its beauty. At sixteen, Vita is shy and isolated, estranged from her father, and bullied at school, but she is determined to come out of herself, step-by-step. When the shocking details of her past surface suddenly, Vita feels utterly betrayed by those closest to her, and the fraught tension between Oyster Creek's two cultures comes to a head. LaRee must ask hard questions about herself as a mother, while Vita turns to unexpected avenues to find meaning and discovers that the truth is almost never found in black-and-white...