SALT LAKES

Drawing sustenance from salt lakes.

This book by Tracey, whose writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, is an education as much about anthropology as geography, about myth and cultural history as much as geological and hydrological science. It’s also about her awakening as a lesbian. Enthralled by the unconventional beauty and strangeness of salt lakes around the world, from the Great Salt Lake to the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, Tracey has been venturing to them for more than a decade, all the while forging relationships with other scientists and activists in common cause. This scrupulously researched survey of some important salt lakes, threatened or ephemeral, is also placed in human context, with an emphasis on dispossessed cultures and efforts to preserve these natural resources and the species that depend on them. Tracey writes that some birds, for instance, including American avocets, “evolved to live at saline lakes, learning to feed in ways that avoid swallowing salt and developing a specialized anatomy to deal with the minerals they do ingest.” Intriguingly, Tracey relates her sexuality to what she sees in the natural world. She writes, “Queers have opened up what counts as marriage; we’ve expanded and exploded the rhythms and practices of life that its legal bonds comprise. Similarly, though the Owens [Lake] may not count as a ‘real’ lake, it’s still something real, existing in the world in its strange and unique way, providing habitat to plants and flies and birds. It has opened up what counts as a lake.” The author’s call to protect marginal places and ways of life resonates deeply. She writes, “Queerness and biodiversity: both forms of difference that enrich the world.”

A perceptive writer’s urgent call to prioritize the abundance and diversity of life.