Life Between the Tides IWF12956527

The sea is not made of water. Creatures areits genes. Look down as you crouch over theshallows and you will find a periwinkle ora prawn, a claw-displaying crab or a clusterof anemones ready to meet you. No need forbinoculars or special stalking skills: go to therocks and the living will say hello.

Inside each rock pool tucked into one of the infinite crevices of the tidal coastline lies a rippling, silent, unknowable universe. Below the stillness of the surface course different currents of endless motionthe ebb and flow of the tide, the steady forward propulsion of the passage of time, and the tiny lifetimes of the rock pools creatures, all of which coalesce into the grand narrative of evolution.

InLife Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson investigates one of the most revelatory habitats on earth. Under his microscope, we see a prawns head become a medieval helmet and a group of winkles transform into a Dickensian social scene, with mollusks munching on Stilton and glancing at their pocket watches. Or, rather, is a winkle more like Achilles, an ancient hero, throwing himself toward death for the sake of glory? For Nicolson, who writes with scientific rigor and a poets sense of wonder (The American Scholar), the world of the rock pools is infinite and as intricate as our own.

As Nicolson journeys between the tides, both in the pools he builds along the coast of Scotland and through the timeline of scientific discovery, he is accompanied by great thinkersno one can escape the pull of the sea. We meet Virginia Woolf and herWaves; a young T. S. Eliot peering into his own rock pool in Massachusetts; even Nicolsons father-in-law, a classical scholar who would hunt for amethysts along the shoreline, his mind on Heraclitus and the other philosophers of ancient Greece. And, of course, scientists populate the pages; not only their discoveries, but also their doubts and errors, their moments of quiet observation and their thrilling realizations.

Everything is within the rock pools, where you can look beyond your own reflection and find the miraculous an inch beneath your nose. The soul wants to be wet, Heraclitus said in Ephesus twenty-five hundred years ago. This marvelous book demonstrates why it is so.

Paperback, Feb 21st 2023