SELF-PORTRAIT WITH TURTLES

Naturalist/writer Carroll (Swampwalker’s Journal, 1999, etc.) reveals all the touchstones that turned him from a Turtle Boy to a Turtle Man.

At the age of eight, the author came across his first wild turtle, first swamp, first real border: “For some time I stood still, absorbing, becoming absorbed. A shivering intensity came over me.” With a Golden Nature Book as his grail map, Carroll takes to the wetlands, barely containing himself at the rush of spring thaw and honing the focus he will need to really see even a fragment of what is there. A spotted turtle becomes his all and only during the early days, and he conveys with enough oomph the effect it has on his sensibilities to make it seem utterly natural that a native place name for this continent is Turtle Island. But turtles will not be his only fixation; art will also help him make the connection he wants with the raw world. He traces the trajectory of his life, as true as a well-fletched arrow: the economic wretchedness of an artist scraping by, the moves throughout New Hampshire as he seeks employment, the melding of his painting and drawing with his avocation (and the influences that draw him in other directions as well), the feeling of being a square peg in a round hole, at odds with more conservative elements. Everywhere he goes, he finds bogs and backwaters and turtles—spotted, painted, wood, box, Blanding’s, and snapping. An episode with a 4 ½-foot, 46-pound behemoth of the last-mentioned variety will give readers who have any familiarity with the creature an inkling of the author’s fine madness. Throughout, his words have the ping of authenticity; Carroll is an environmentalist who lives the word right down to his wet sneakers.

A pitch-perfect memoir, skirting sentimentality as it embraces sentiment, getting at nature’s marvel and its endless transfigurations. (40 b&w line drawings and halftones by the author)