Swimming to the Top of the Tide: Finding Life Where Land and Water Meet

by Patricia Hanlon

Overview

Four seasons of immersion in New England’s Great Marsh

“Like Wendell Berry and Rachel Carson, Hanlon is a true poet-ecologist, sharing in exquisitely resonant prose her patient observations of nature’s most intimate details. As she and her husband, through summer and snow, swim their local creeks and estuaries, we marvel at the timeless yet fragile terrain of both marshlands and marriage. This is the book to awaken all of us, right now, to how our coastline is changing and what it means for our future.” —Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and A House Among the Trees

The Great Marsh is the largest continuous stretch of salt marsh in New England, extending from Cape Ann to New Hampshire. Patricia Hanlon and her husband built their home and raised their children alongside it. But it is not until the children are grown that they begin to swim the tidal estuary daily. Immersing herself, she experiences, with all her senses in all seasons, the vigor of a place where the two ecosystems of fresh and salt water mix, merge, and create new life.

In Swimming to the Top of the Tide, Hanlon lyrically charts her explorations, at once intimate and scientific. Noting the disruptions caused by human intervention, she bears witness to the vitality of the watersheds, their essential role in the natural world, and the responsibility of those who love them to contribute to their sustainability.

Patricia Hanlon is a visual artist who paints the beautiful ecosystem of New England’s Great Marsh and is involved in the watershed organizations of Greater Boston. Swimming to the Top of the Tide is her first book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942658870
Publisher:	Bellevue Literary Press
Publication date:	06/08/2021
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,017,983
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 5.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Patricia Hanlon is a visual artist who paints the beautiful ecosystem of New England’s Great Marsh and is involved in the watershed organizations of Greater Boston. Swimming to the Top of the Tide chronicles a year of swimming the tidal estuaries with her husband, Robert, and is her first book.

Table of Contents

Land and Sea: An Overture 15

Part 1 21

Bedrock 23

River Basin 26

Tidal Strait 34

Ebben Creek 40

Tidelog 45

September 47

Biologist 51

Cold 58

Fall Equinox 68

November 74

Winter Solstice 86

January 92

Swimming in Parentheses 97

Quarry 102

Late Winter 109

Spring Equinox 114

The Return of Green 116

Walking to the Bottom of the Tide 123

Full Circle 132

Part 2 135

Ground Truth 137

A Longer View 150

Nassau, Again 155

Areas of Critical Environmental Concern 160

Channels 170

Airborne 189

Earthbound 193

Swimming to the Top of the Tide 198

Epilogue 209

Acknowledgments 215

Endnotes 217

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2021

Hanlon, an artist and longtime coastal Massachusetts resident, tours New England’s Great Marsh in her charming debut, vividly capturing the natural beauty and geological history of the watershed along the Massachusetts and New Hampshire coast. The first part of Hanlon’s survey sees her and her husband “exploring the same landscapes over and over”: after her children grew up and left home, Hanlon writes, she and her husband browsed the beaches, quarries, and saltwater creeks that form the marsh, and she turns the quotidian details of marriage and family life into a lyrical investigation of “something bigger and more complex than oneself” as she and her husband “made a pact with each other to swim every time we possibly could.” The second part sheds light on such environmental concerns as habitat loss and overfishing, and interviews with scientists (such as a marine biologist who studies nitrogen runoff) enrich the story without breaking the flow. Merging leisurely seaside adventure with ecological sensibilities, Hanlon delivers a lyrical ode to a changing environment: “Places become real when they are loved,” she writes. This is bound to please both environmentalists and anyone in search of a breezy dip into nature. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Part how-to guide, part nature journal, part ecological call to action, this book inspires the reader to take a closer look at the everyday cycles in their own backyards.” —Tree Abraham, Electric Literature

“Delightful. . . . Hanlon offers an alternative vision to environmental preservation that emphasizes communal responsibility over the pervasive doom and gloom of climate activism.” —Cleaver Magazine

“In her charming debut . . . [Hanlon] turns the quotidian details of marriage and family life into a lyrical investigation of ‘something bigger and more complex than oneself.’ . . . Merging leisurely seaside adventure with ecological sensibilities, Hanlon delivers a lyrical ode to a changing environment.” —Publishers Weekly

“Graceful in its descriptive power. . . . Hanlon understands how our moral imagination exerts a profound influence on our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. . . . [Her] observations are as gently propulsive as the rhythmic stroke of a swim fin.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[Hanlon] is as skilled at demystifying complex scientific concepts as she is in portraying gold-spangled waterline sunsets and muted winter compositions of marsh grasses. The whole is enriched with personal reflections on raising a family, aging, and the changing nature of marriage.” —Foreword Reviews

“Written with a swimmer’s spirit, a naturalist’s eye, and an ecologist’s heart, this book took me to places I have never been. I loved it!” —Lynne Cox, author of Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer and Swimming in the Sink: An Episode of the Heart

“Hanlon’s narrative—spare and serene—flows to the rhythms of rising and falling water. Her account, rooted in the particular—nose level in a saltwater creek under the cerulean skies of an idyllic summer, or in icy slush on a dark winter night—is a timely call to consider the tragedies and possibilities of our moment.” —Deborah Cramer, author of Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water, Our World and The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey

“Like Wendell Berry and Rachel Carson, Hanlon is a true poet-ecologist, sharing in exquisitely resonant prose her patient observations of nature’s most intimate details. As she and her husband, through summer and snow, swim their local creeks and estuaries, we marvel at the timeless yet fragile terrain of both marshlands and marriage. This is the book to awaken all of us, right now, to how our coastline is changing and what it means for our future.” —Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and A House Among the Trees

“There is nothing quite so wonderful as slipping into a creek and letting it carry you upstream until the tide imperceptibly turns and carries you back out toward the ocean. It is doubly wonderful to discover someone who describes this experience with such love, lyricism, and scientific curiosity. Let Hanlon be your guide to this world.” —William Sargent, author of The House on Ipswich Marsh and Plum Island: 4,000 Years on a Barrier Beach

“Hanlon, in a year of swimming her way through marshes, across tidal rivers and sculpted granite quarries unique to Cape Ann, observes with a remarkably steady gaze all the world has to offer—the beauty and losses both. In clear, spare prose and fine-tuned observation, she takes you on a journey you won’t soon forget.” —Tim Traver, author of Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh and Fly Fishing and Conservation in Vermont

From the Publisher

2021-03-31
A fluently rendered ode to tidal creeks and salt marshes and to a life in their embrace.

In this celebration of the Great Marsh, New England’s largest remaining continuous stretch of salt marsh, painter and writer Hanlon melds the sensibilities of a Southern California childhood with those of a 40-year resident of coastal Massachusetts. She also compares this complex ecosystem to those of the vastly larger Mississippi Delta and a Bahamian reef. Science is a key element in the book, but the narrative is viewed best as an account of the experience of four seasons of immersion in the flora, fauna, and tides of extensively protected marsh. Her realm may at times be turbid, but her prose is clear—graceful in its descriptive power though allowing for the occasional tributary into lyricism. The first half of the book is about exploring the same landscape repeatedly year-round, accreting knowledge of an estuary: its cycles, processes, and patterns. Hanlon provides a biologic (and microbiologic) cross section of the salt marsh habitat, the grasses that fortify it, and the fauna that subsist on its largesse. In the second half, the author reflects a need to understand “something of our current cultural and evolutionary moment, with both its tragedies and its possibilities.” Hanlon understands how our moral imagination exerts a profound influence on our thoughts, attitudes, and actions, and her various warnings on the rising threats facing vital marshlands nationwide are no less important for being familiar. Also coursing through this tale are the currents of her marriage and shared passions with her husband, also an artist, with asides on their custom wood furniture business, children, and grandchildren. Readers not especially enamored of the idea of swimming in tidal creeks and rivers day after day may find portions of the book a bit monotonous—but not if they appreciate the theme of deep human integration in the natural world.

Hanlon’s observations are as gently propulsive as the rhythmic stroke of a swim fin.

Kirkus Reviews