Bayshore Summer: Finding Eden in a Most Unlikely Place

Bayshore Summer is the second entry, following Prairie Spring, in Pete Dunne’s four book series exploring each of the seasons in a special place. When I think of birding in the summer, I first think of Southeast Arizona’s hummingbird bonanza or the explosion of life in the Arctic. However, Dunne takes us to an unexpected location – New Jersey’s Delaware Bay shore.

Following the same pattern as Prairie Spring, Dunne explores the natural world of Jersey’s bayshore through mostly independent, vignette-like chapters. Naturally, since the author is one of North America’s preeminent birders and writer about birds, birds play a role in this narrative. But it is not as much as I was expecting, and much less than in the series’ first volume.

Most of the attention is given to the people who interact with this ecosystem. Through the author, the reader goes out on a large fishing party boat with dozens of recreational fishermen as well as small skiffs with lifelong baymen. You will tag along with game wardens during a sting operation designed to catch a poacher. You will also work alongside those bailing hay in the marshes and visit local farming operations that grow the famous “Jersey Tomato”. Through all of this, you will gain an insight into this endangered environment, including its inhabitants and culture.

While this series’ initial entry filled me with a desire to visit the prairie and know it the way Dunne did, this one did not accomplish the same. The entire chapter devoted to the horrors inflicted by the hoards of biting and stinging critters that emerge in summer didn’t help in this regard. (Though I must say that chapter is classic Dunne*.) Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy learning about this place that I knew virtually nothing about beforehand. It just didn’t make me want to jump on a plane and explore it myself.

But I think that’s ok. Dunne isn’t trying to convince the reader to visit this particular location as much as he’s beseeching you to pay attention to what is going on around you, wherever that is. To me, the heart of the book is a brilliant chapter on the unseen (or more likely, unnoticed) natural dramas playing out even in the middle of summer, when it’s so easy to miss or think that “just the usual” is going on. But throughout Bayshore Summer, Dunne encourages us to not just observe, but to actively engage the natural world.

Recommendation

Honestly, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as Prairie Spring. Personally, I would have preferred more writing about birds and other creatures and less about fishing. But I also understand that’s not the story Dunne wanted to tell. He’s written plenty about birds, this is about something greater. Interaction with nature can take many forms – birding, fishing, farming, hunting, even poaching. It’s not so much how you do it, but just that you get outside and do it. (Although poaching is probably not the best choice.) And Dunne succeeds in this regard; Bayshore Summer makes you yearn for a greater connection with nature and place, whether that be along Jersey’s bayshore or somewhere else. (And just for the record, I’d still rather read Dunne’s writing on a subject I have no interest in than just about anyone else’s about something I love.)

*I love this quote:

As a species, we have certainly been guilty of many affronts to nature and the divine order, and a reckoning in the here or the hereafter is due.
There is still no excuse for chiggers.

It’s funny because it’s true.