WANDERER ON MY NATIVE SHORE

by George Reiger ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1983

Graceful, purposeful ruminations on the Atlantic coast from Eastport to Key West and beyond. Reiger is an adept with rod and gun, an aquarium-enthusiast, a quondam diver, a history buff--and, region by region, he addresses those various interests. ""The agony of Chesapeake Bay,"" he notes, ""is that too many people are trying to make it serve too many perspectives."" The information is place-specific--the local fish, the nesting birds, the distinctive plant life, the human denizens; and it's interwoven with the geology, the climatic changes, the problems of resource management. In each region Reiger takes in the National Wildlife Refuge (at Atlantic City's Brigantine, the snow goose has come back but the black duck is endangered) and often, like John McPhee, he lets a zealot's pursuit shape the content. There's lore about the books that devotees swear by (how Roger Tory Peterson, for instance, improved upon Frank Chapman) and a lot of social and cultural history--in Florida, stretching from the Seminole ""relocation program"" to the creation of Palm Beach, Miami Beach, and Coral Gables. As a child or an adult, Reiger has lived in many of these locales--the Southern material is especially and uncommonly strong. He is a hunter of waterfowl, however, as well as a fisherman; and a forthright anti-sentimentalist (particularly re ""the martyrdom of the whales""). There's considerable pleasure and learning to be found here regardless--in a format that complements Philip Kopper's topical The Wild Edge (1979)--to which drawings by Rachel Carson-illustrator Bob Hines will contribute materially.

Pub Date: May 11, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION