Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination

Barbara Hurd writes with a poet's instinct. She had a way of crafting the words that bring to mind the damp smell of the forest floor, the beauty that is nature.

This book is NOT meant to be a review of the natural history of swamps and bogs, though Hurd does weave that in throughout her text. There are plenty of other good books that accomplish that. What Hurd does is to take the metaphoric views of swamps and bogs that our culture presents and translate personal experiences and perspectives through that language. If you're interested in the confluence of nature and psyche, this is a book to ponder.

"Stirring the Mud" is a series of masterful essays that wade - literally and figuratively - through sometimes fetid, always dank and uncertain territory. Hurd's tapestry of remarkable facts, fascinating lore, her own exploration of the physical world, personal recollection, spiritual journey, and elegant, luminous prose create a magic carpet flight that endures. There is nothing easy about truly entering the natural world. Like every other living thing, one earns ones momentary place, and the dangers and gifts that may be found lead us always right to the edges of ourselves. This book is a fine companion for those who are hungry for that edge, or anyone who loves a great ride of the spirit. I wholly recommend this book.

Each essay in STIRRING THE MUD is a hybrid of poetry and prose well suited to its swampy, mysterious content, which often varies widely from paragraph to paragraph. In fact, Hurd sometimes weaves together several topics within a paragraph, traveling with the speed of poetry rather than prose. It is no accident that poets have written blurbs of praise for the back of this book's jacket. This is a book in which the gorgeous paragraphs reign. Don't miss them! The one downfall is that the book does not read well as the united whole its numbered chapters would suggest it is. We consistently and disruptively at the beginning of each chapter enter the swamp, again. And again. It would have been a welcome change of pace to stay in the swamp for two consecutive chapters once or twice. Without also having edited to further diminish repetition, better to have let them stand obviously as individual essays.I suspect that Hurd must have been torn, the naturalist in her dared not leaver her beloved swamps only to the essayist but had to summon the poet also. No wonder this multiple talent struggled with form. She created a sort of hybrid that resists categorization. I hope her next work will emerge with a form even more unique.

This is a marvelous book, the best of its kind since Barry Lopez's ARCTIC DREAMS. In it, she traverses swamps and bogs with an expert's eye, and with concerns that keep resonating into the lives we live or might live, and those we repress. No one has written more lovingly (or is it fearlessly?) about sinking into the muck or enduring, even seeking out uncertainties. With language as lyrical as it is precise, Hurd speculates about "how it's possible to be on the ridge and in the thicket at the exact same time." I can't remember when I've felt so aesthetically satisfied while learning so much.