by Susan Hand Shetterly
DownEast Books, 2022
Susan Hand Shetterly arrived in Prospect Harbor, Maine, as a young woman, a self-described “back-to-the-lander who’d never learned from the land, but was about to.” Along with her husband and infant son, she moved into an unfinished cabin in the woods just a short bike ride from the water and began the hard work of settling into a new, rural place.
In one of the first essays in her new book, Shetterly describes these “apprenticeship” years, recalling the graciousness of village residents, and the challenge of learning so much, all at once. She cut and split wood, and grew food for her family. She acquainted herself with the wildlife around her home, and claimed as her summer writing studio a former chicken coop. Over time, despite some misadventures (including an epic laundromat fail), she found her footing in her small Down East community.
“I was learning all that I could, as people do when everything is new,” Shetterly writes, “about where I was in this world, its trees and wild birds and animals, fish and fishermen, the women who knitted mittens for the village children for Christmas, and the big salt marsh where the saltmeadow cordgrass grew.”
Notes on the Landscape of Home is an exquisite book, beautifully written and good-hearted. It comprises 32 short essays, some new and many others adapted from Shetterly’s columns in Down East magazine. Almost all the essays relate to the people and natural wonders of coastal Maine, and most connect specifically to the Blue Hill peninsula, where Shetterly moved after her first decade in the state, and where she has worked vigorously to conserve land and to care for birds and other wildlife.
Part of the appeal of this book is the quality of the writing. Here, for example, is her careful observation of wild turkey hens and poults she watched one afternoon: “The three dams took them to a bed of dry sphagnum, and the little ones plopped down at their feet and fell fast asleep. Just like that. Some with their wings spread wide. Some folded, with their heads tucked in their shoulder feathers.”
Although Shetterly celebrates the natural wonders of Down East Maine, she’s frank about its troubles, including its vulnerability to a warming climate and other human-caused harms. Changes often come to this remote patch of coastline “like a whisper, trailing catastrophe from failing systems somewhere else.” From the net scars on whales to looming habitat loss for yellowlegs and other birds, this beloved landscape is a “broken, beautiful place.”
She’s pained by these past and impending losses, but she doesn’t dwell. A theme running through all these essays is the restorative value of compassionate observation, both as a source of personal grace and healing, and as the grounding from which we can take positive environmental action. Early in the book, Shetterly quotes E.M. Forster, whose books, she notes, “embrace the imperative of connecting to something outside oneself, and of taking a brave chance on the wide world.” Notes on the Landscape of Home draws on this literary legacy, and readers are richer for it.