Synopses & Reviews
A luminous and revelatory journey into the science of life and the depths of the human experience.
Every year, the molecular biologist Aaron Hirsh leads a group of students to Baja, in the Sea of Cortez, one of the richest marine ecosystems in the world. Telling Our Way to the Sea is the story of one of these summer adventures. We watch as Hirsh and his wife get to know the undergraduates as they all drive south into Mexico, venture into the sea with them for the first time, and ultimately hunker down with the group as a hurricane rips through the Bahia de los Angeles, leaving an edenic day of natural wonders in its wake.
At the same time, Telling Our Way to the Sea is a deep meditation on the issues raised by evolutionary biology, from the nature of invasive species to the question of whether there is any truth to the old hunch that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” As the students awaken to the world around them and to themselves, we spiral ever deeper into the mysteries of nature and the science of evolution.
Hirsh's voice resounds with depth and compassionate humanity. This is science writing of the very first order, transcending the genre and becoming something akin to literature.
Review
“We go in search of wilderness, and so it is wilderness we find,” biologist Hirsh writes in his wondrous nonfiction debut — a journey through the inlets and islands of Mexico's Sea of Cortez....In prose that marries lush scientific details and poetic language (complete with transfixing descriptions of sea cucumber regeneration), Hirsh delivers an important work about the power of place and the power of stories — scientific, historical, and personal — to shape our understanding of our world.” Publishers' Weekly (starred review)
Review
“A book as rich and intricate as the oceanic world it evokes, Telling Our Way to the Sea is hard to pigeonhole but easy to savor. Using the dramatic backdrop of the Sea of Cortez — fertile waters rimmed by brutal desert — Hirsh plumbs marine biology, evolutionary change, ecological memory, the history of science, and much more to explore the past and possible future of this fecund ecosystem. One of the most thoughtful books on nature, and our place in it, that I've read in years.” Scott Weidensaul, author of Living on the Wind and The First Frontier
Review
“Aaron Hirsh thinks like a scientist and writes like a poet. Telling Our Way to the Sea is a captivating, deeply illuminating exploration of the sumptuous natural world we have, and of its origins in the many worlds we've lost. A moving and important and utterly beguiling book.” William Souder, author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson
Review
“A person who is both a fine scientist and a brilliant writer is a rare phenomenon, but that describes Aaron Hirsh. In the first few pages of Telling Our Way to the Sea, you learn about the fascinating responses of Isostichopus fuscus to predators. After that, you wont be able to put the book down. A literary triumph.” Paul R. Erlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University
Review
"Beautifully descriptive prose and accessible science combine to create a fascinating look at a seemingly abundant ecosystem....This work is a rich exploration of the Sea of Cortez and its surroundings for readers interested in the ecology, history, and current inhabitants of the area, as well as fans of lyrically written natural history books and/or of evolutionary biology.” Library Journal
Synopsis
A luminous and revelatory journey into the science of life and the depths of the human experience
By turns epic and intimate, Telling Our Way to the Sea is both a staggering revelation of unraveling ecosystems and a profound meditation on our changing relationships with nature--and with one another.
When the biologists Aaron Hirsh and Veronica Volny, along with their friend Graham Burnett, a historian of science, lead twelve college students to a remote fishing village on the Sea of Cortez, they come upon a bay of dazzling beauty and richness. But as the group pursues various threads of investigation--ecological and evolutionary studies of the sea, the desert, and their various species of animals and plants; the stories of local villagers; the journals of conquistadors and explorers--they recognize that the bay, spectacular and pristine though it seems, is but a ghost of what it once was. Life in the Sea of Cortez, they realize, has been reshaped by complex human ideas and decisions--the laws and economics of fishing, property, and water; the dreams of developers and the fantasies of tourists seeking the wild; even efforts to retrieve species from the brink of extinction--all of which have caused dramatic upheavals in the ecosystem. It is a painful realization, but the students discover a way forward.
After weathering a hurricane and encountering a rare whale in its wake, they come to see that the bay's best chance of recovery may in fact reside in our own human stories, which can weave a compelling memory of the place. Glimpsing the intricate and ever-shifting web of human connections with the Sea of Cortez, the students comprehend anew their own place in the natural world--suspended between past and future, teetering between abundance and loss. The redemption in their difficult realization is that as they find their places in a profoundly altered environment, they also recognize their roles in the path ahead, and ultimately come to see one another, and themselves, in a new light.
In Telling Our Way to the Sea, Hirsh's voice resounds with compassionate humanity, capturing the complex beauty of both the marine world he explores and the people he explores it with. Vibrantly alive with sensitivity and nuance, Telling Our Way to the Sea transcends its genre to become literature.
About the Author
Aaron Hirsh is the director of the Vermilion Sea Institute. He is a research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and his essays have appeared in literary journals and in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Hirsh was a founder of the biotechnology company InterCell and serves on the board of Roberts and Company Publishers. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.