Swampwalker's Journal

Book excerpt: Winner of the John Burroughs Medal: An “admission ticket to a secret corner of the world” (Bill McKibben). Naturalist David Carroll has dedicated his life to art and to wetlands. He is as passionate about swamps, bogs, 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,” 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 (Sue Hubbell). “Carroll covers four seasons of wading through marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens. [His] eye for detail serves him well, whether he’s spying on a tiny garter snake struggling to suck down a much larger wood frog or watching a raccoon savagely digging a turtle out of its shell.” —Entertainment Weekly “In my pantheon of nature writers, David Carroll walks on water.” —Robert Michael Pyle