A Place Between the Tides: A Naturalist's Reflections on the Salt Marsh

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Tranquillity seeps from every page of Thurston’s work. Like mist
rising from the vast Tantramar Salt Marsh (where Nova Scotia meets New
Brunswick), calmness wraps around the reader of his delicate prose.

Thurston, the author of several books and articles on wetlands and
shorebirds, records and interprets his observations of the salt marsh
through the seasons. Month by month, he reports on the insects, fish,
birds, vegetation, and animals that inhabit this “Atlantic prairie.”
His non-judgmental reporting covers the range of creatures from mosquito
and eagle to minnow and deer. Osprey, seal, whale, fox, heron, gull,
smelt, duck, cormorant, clam—all are observed from a respectful
distance, their characteristics and behaviours noted without
interference.

For the majority of readers, having the solitude and leisure to observe
a natural ecosystem for an extended time is an unattainable luxury.
Hence the work carries something of the tone of coming from an alien
world. In the midst of city life, office towers, and frantic
expressways, the growth cycle of marsh grass or the spawning of smelt
seem to be issues drawn from another world. In this respect, the book
serves as escape literature. It pulls us into its world with a tug as
gentle, and as persistent, as the tides.