by Abbie Gascho Landis
Island Press, 2017
Have you ever found a freshwater mussel in the shallows of a New England lake or pond? They seem so secretive, pressed closed in their dark shells, their soft bodies hidden from view – so often unseen and seemingly unremarkable. How many of us have ever paid much attention to these quiet mollusks? How do they live? And what is it they do tucked away so snugly at the bottom of our freshwater wetlands?
Abbie Gascho Landis knows. After you read her gracefully written book, Immersion: The Science and Mystery of Freshwater Mussels, you’ll know, too, and will never see a mussel the same way again. Landis deftly describes the beauty and fragility of these ancient creatures and their essential role in our freshwater ecosystems. She opens their shells and gives up their secrets for all who are lucky enough to read this pearl of a book.
Immersion is a provocative blend: part memoir, part natural history, and part alarm bell. Landis asks us to consider mussels and to “heed their dwindlings and extinctions as a smoke detector piercing night.”
Her writing is personal. She tells us, for example, about the time she first saw a mussel displaying, which happened while she was pregnant and snorkeling along a shallow creek. She writes, “I recognized this [creature] turning inside out for the next generation. This mussel and I were similarly vulnerable, preparing to empty our bodies into the future.”
The book is filled with Landis’s journey into the compact and concealed world of these creatures. She describes as heroes the scientists who devote their lives to researching mussels and the advocates who speak for the creatures. Her descriptions are vivid and captivating. Just as a mussel lures in a fish to deposit offspring on its gills, the author invites readers to take her bait and make a stand for freshwater mussels.
In a sense, Immersion is the story of how Landis falls in love with an often overlooked and unseen animal. Her writing celebrates the world she discovers. She dives deep into her subject, and through her steady exploration, we learn about mussels alongside her. Her love for them is contagious, and her writing is both informative and poetic. She takes a wider view, too, reminding us that the mussels’ peril is our own. We need the same thing: plentiful clean water in healthy creeks and rivers. Abbie Gascho Landis is paying attention and inviting us to pay attention, too.