Kathleen F's Reviews > Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains

I found this book accidentally during a library catalog search on the subject of "walking." It was a serendipitous find--Hurd's essays, about using nature's discarded debris along the shore as metaphors for different aspects of our lives, are both poetic and intensely thoughtful. Through Hurd's eyes and words, such oddities as a broken oar, discarded shells, an empty and cracked pelican egg, driftwood, stones, sea glass, microscopic sand creatures, sea stars, and decaying jellyfish, acquire a form resembling brilliance. It is a book only someone middle-aged could write, I think, given its tone of quiet pensiveness tinted with a shade of regret. Anyone younger, as the author notes, would have "skirted or stepped over [the wrack line:] thousands of times in younger-me rush to get to the water." Only when you are older, perhaps, have acquired a bit of weathering and drifting yourself, can you appreciate what is broken, worn, discarded. I love that she has been able to create such beauty from debris...it gives me such hope. If you like lyrical non-fiction, it's worth reading. You can definitely see shades of Annie Dillard and Loren Eiseley here, who are Barbara Hurd's self-confessed heroes.