Photo by Robin Melavalin
Swimming With Turtles: How Wonder Reconnects Us
To the Natural World
Susan Baur
Photo: Robin Melavalin
COVER HERE
“A rare kind of exploration story—one that illuminates not only a hidden world of ponds and turtles but the inner landscapes we all travel as we age, grieve, and rediscover joy. Susan Baur shows us that wonder is not a fleeting emotion; it is a compass, and it points us back to life.”—Richard Wiese, President, The Explorers Club
“Refreshing, constantly surprising, and with a maverick curiosity that is full of humor while challenging lazy narratives and stereotypes, Susan’s journey to becoming a citizen of the natural world shows us that joy is what inspires action. Swimming with Turtles is for anyone who needs to get back in touch with the possible.”—Patrick Naylor, editor, The Outdoor Swimming Society
.
“Susan Baur has re-written the art of observation, a skill that is waning in our immediate AI driven world. To swim with the turtles is to open a world of patience, nuance and wonder!”—Ian Ives, Director Massachusetts Audubon's Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary, Barnstable
“This is not only a splendid tale of personal transformation, but a truly transforming book. Put on your mask for an unforgettable dive into a beautiful underwater world.”—Alan Flashman, MD, Psychiatrist, author of Family Therapies For the 21st Century
“I salute Susan Baur, who offers us a great gift: an account of wonder which reveals the work that a life changed by wonder requires, but also the transformation it can accomplish. Everything that matters about this vital subject is here.”—Patrick Curry, author of Enchantment: Wonder In Modern Life and Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works
“A meditation celebrating the discovery of wonder that helps us dive into the difficulties, mystery, and miracle of being alive. A book worth making a companion.”—James McGuire, MD, Psychiatrist
“Susan Baur's stories of meeting and befriending turtles in Cape Cod kettle ponds are fascinating. The lessons of learning her own cold water swimming limits, how to interact with snapping turtles, and how to draw a turtle without preconceived notions are profoundly instructive for each of us.”—Steve Waller, author of A Moving Meditation: Life on a Cape Cod Kettle Pond
“In Cape Cod’s modest ponds, Susan Baur, a lifelong explorer, learns that as age constricts, wonder expands. She takes readers along as she learns about local turtles, through whom she masters the difficult arts of observation, patience, and acceptance of what she can’t change: people’s ingrained attitudes, aging, and dying. She writes with the lyricism of a poet and the mind of a scientist.”—Martha Molnar, author of Playing God in the Meadow: How I Learned to Admire My Weeds
My book recounts how, over the course of eighteen years, as I swam with the pond turtles of Cape Cod, moments of wonder let me see beyond my own concerns and assumptions into the single, great ecosystem which supports us all: nature went from things I could use to beings I could relate to.
Although a growing number of books decry the exploitation of the natural world and some point to awe, wonder, and enchantment as powerful antidotes, none (to my knowledge) follows, step by step, the transformation that wonder generates.. As a psychologist who understands how difficult it is for anyone to change significantly, I wanted to know how wonder captivates, charms, leads through long periods of painful unlearning, then cracks open the self and delivers unanticipated joy and support. The Irish writer, Iris Murdoch, observed that “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love . . . is the discovery of reality.” My book describes how this happens.