Bay Country

by Tom Horton

Bay Country , Tom Horton's bestselling book about the Chesapeake, is now available in paperback from Johns Hopkins. A native of Maryland's Eastern Shore, Horton has written about the environment for the past fifteen years in the Baltimore Sun . He is a writer who can mention herring and Proust in the same breath―and charm readers with no previous affection for either. His stories of oysters and sea nettle, elms and rivers, barrier islands and blue crabs, farmers and watermen, always reach beyond the local to the most universal of subjects.

Genres: Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author visited my class a couple of years before he published this book. It was a UMBC geography class about the Bay itself, and this was one of many ways our professor enriched the class. My father found this book in his apartment recently and passed it along. My favorite librarian -- and fellow UMBC graduate -- read the entire book to me, and we both just loved it.
It makes me appreciate the Cheseapeake Bay even more. It is both an homage to some coastal landscapes that have for ever changed and a call to conserve those that remain. We live on a different coast now (South Coast of Massachusetts), and I think anybody who cares about coastal environments will appreciate this writing.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays featuring the flora and fauna of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Horton doesn't focus only on the charismatic species of the mid-Atlantic (oysters, blue crabs); he gets down with critters that could use the good PR, like jellyfish ("Nettlesome Facts of Life") and American Eels. Not to mention his trip to the wastewater treatment plant at Blue Plains. He unpacks abiotic factors that affect the health of the bay's ecosystem: wind directions, the delicately balanced flows of salt and fresh water. And he does so, even though these pieces stemmed from his work for the Baltimore Sun, with minimal repetition.

Horton is not sentimental about the likely fate of watermen on Smith Island and elsewhere in the bay. He takes a ride on the skipjack Sigsbee on a miserably cold, wet, barely productive trip at the end of oystering season.

Although his prose is rarely metaphoric, this wonderful turn of phrase stands out:

[A landscape's] personality seems to manifest itself from the commonest settings—the mild-mannered, threadbare elegance of limestone pasture, the grouchy isolation of a thicket, the sleek pile of a spartina marsh, arching its back with feline pleasure as the wind brushes it. (p. 180)

Definitely a title for a DMV naturalist's bookshelf.

[David Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of slightly dated essays about the human and natural history of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed by a journalist for the "Baltimore Sun" newspaper. The book won the Burrough's Medal in 1988 for the year's outstanding book of nature writing. Horton has loosely grouped essays with similar themes together into nine sections. The writing style ranges from reportorial to lyrical, but usually lands somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, there is too much repetition of information; Horton probably wrote these essays over time and as a result treated some of the subjects repeatedly. I imagine that he edited the essays before creating this book, but the same information tends to creep in repeatedly. Nevertheless, the essays are very well written and engaging, so I forgive Horton this oversight. I would probably have awarded this book 4.5 stars if GoodReads had allowed me to do so, but I'm "rounding up" because of the quality of the writing and the research.

[Sheilagh · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the preface: "He could not help but be impressed at how smart people were in this world, able to build spaceships and land people on the moon. But for all that, he said, "we have never figured out what to do with our water, and that's gonna put an end to the world, not just to my living.""

These essays make me want to walk every square foot of southern, rural Maryland. Maybe even walk out into the water to discovery if I can see my toes a la Bernie.
Worth reading and rereading.

[Marta Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful portrait of the natural life in the Chesapeake Bay and the people who make their living from it.

[Howard White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly the best nature/environmental writer this side of John McPhee. Wonderful, well-written essays on different aspects of Chesapeake Bay by the long-time environmental reporter for The Baltimore Sun, most from the late '80s and '90s. His essays, though a bit dated, remain ever-green and cautionary.

Sadly, the Bay's condition has worsened since these vignettes were written. Population in the five-state Chesapeake Bay watershed has increased, worsening water quality from the Bay headwaters in upstate New York to the Bay's southern terminus in Virginia. Phosphates and nitrates from everything from lawn fertilizers to industrial processes and--ahem--toilet contents, have fed a phytoplanktonic cycle that has leached oxygen from the bay waters and its tributaries. The casualties range from the the iconic blue crabs, rockfish, and succulent oysters, to a host of smaller, less charismatic species just as vital to the Bay's welfare and economics.

[Jeff Gramm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bay Country is a collection of essays about the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries by Baltimore Sun columnist Tom Horton. This is one of my favorite books and I try to reread it every few years. Each essay is beautifully written and the topics range from local poets and Eastern shore villages to the mating habits of eels and oysters. Horton's parents were newspaper writers in Salisbury and when you read his prose, you can't help but liken his writing skill to the trade of the watermen he writes about. . .an heirloom passed along from generation to generation.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is almost a very good book about the Chesapeake Bay, but Horton the journalist's literary ambitions and overreach seriously mar a few of the essays. Fortunately not most, and it's got some good information (albeit dated - 1987) and a few decent yarns. Worth the read for those interested, but you have to skim over some stuff even a sensible blue crab wouldn't touch.