The Landlubber Gift Guide

Some books and stuff that you can buy

Hello everyone,

Thanksgiving is officially over which means that here in the United States, we’ve entered Shopping Season, a month-long period that runs parallel to The Holidays and involves (for me, at least) a nagging, low-frequency stress that permeates day-to-day life in ways small and large. Giving and receiving gifts is a joy, but shopping for lots of them at the same time is, in my experience, a huge pain. Today’s letter is a gift guide, which is just a collection of things I like, and that I believe would make good gifts.

In keeping with the theme of this newsletter, everything here has some kind of connection to the water. There are great trips out on New York Harbor, books about coastlines, oceans, and marine life, neat gear, art, and a couple of ideas for more creative gifts that won’t break the bank. Prices range from a few dollars all the way into the hundreds. There are a few ideas for homemade gifts, too. My advice on those is to get around to them sooner rather than later so you don’t find yourself staying up to work on them the day before you need to give your gift (that time is for frantic gift wrapping).

Anyway, here’s the guide, which should hold you over until I send out a longer, long-delayed letter about the environmental history of Atlantic coastlines in the Northeast. Wherever possible, tried to link to a website that wasn’t Amazon, but I didn’t succeed in every case.

Experiences (the best gifts of all):

Boat Tour: Seals, Seabirds, and Winter Wildlife ($124)

I’ve promoted this tour here before, but it’s going to be amazing (and cozy!) The boats are nice, and have a full bar. We’ll see sea ducks, and loons, and gannets, as well as the seals that overwinter on some desolate islands out past the Verrazzano Bridge. These tours are basically the perfect gift, in my humble, unbiased opinion.

(The link I’ve included above is my affiliate link, which records any traffic I send over to Classic Harbor Line, so if you’re going to book one of these tours (or share them with a friend) I’d appreciate it if you used my link to do so!)

Custom Bird/Nature Tour (with me!) (prices vary)

If you want to give someone the gift of a nature walk, or a learn-to-bird class, just reply to this email! I can put together a custom experience, and send over a nice certificate that can be printed and placed in an envelope. Just respond to this email for inquiries! If you don’t want to go on a tour with me, I can also recommend other local nature guides.

Sailing Lesson with Hudson River Community Sailing ($125 for 3-hour open lesson)

If you want to learn to sail, but hate elitist, exclusive, expensive institutions, Hudson River Community Sailing is a friendly non-profit and a relatively-affordable option with two locations in Manhattan—one just north of Chelsea Piers at 26th Street, and another out of Dyckman Marina uptown.

A Day Trip on Jamaica Bay with Sail Rockaway ($180 for a private 2-hour sail)

Sail Rockaway is a small operation run out of Marina 59 in (you guessed it) Rockaway, and if you’re interested in exploring the wonderful urban wilderness that is Jamaica Bay, a day out with Sean or Sam on Christina or the Drascombe Lugger is what you need. The boats are small and nimble enough to get into those hard-to-reach marshes, and it looks like they even offer an early morning birdwatching excursion.

Books (the second best gifts of all):

The Sea Around Us -or- Under the Sea Wind by Rachel Carson (both under $15)

Rachel Carson is best known for Silent Spring, the environmental classic that led to the banning of DDT (you can thank her every time you hear a chorus of frogs thundering from a little pond, or see an osprey passing overhead with a fish). But before Silent Spring, Carson got her start writing about marine ecology, and she was great at it. Both of these books are classics, but The Sea Around Us might be the more polished product.

Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan by Phillip Lopate ($21)

An excellent account of the history, architecture, and ecology of Manhattan’s waterfront, told as a walking journey around the island’s circumference. Throughout, there’s an earnest, heartfelt yearning for a return to the city’s shoreline and the revival of its once-rich maritime culture. If you’ve been reading any of this newsletter, you know that these are sentiments fully shared by yours truly!

The View From Lazy Point -or- Song for the Blue Ocean by Carl Safina (each ~$25)
The View from Lazy Point might be the book that made me want to become a nature writer: it’s a stunning account of a year spent out on the East End of Long Island, a story that progresses with the arrival and departure of various animals and is broken up by longer trips out to far-flung places. Song for the Blue Ocean is a longer, more ambitious book that traces issues with global fisheries everywhere, from ranches in the American West, to Japanese fish markets, to spotter-planes used to fish for tuna in the Northeast.

Heartbeats in the Muck -or- Running Silver by John Waldman

John Waldman is a true unicorn: the career scientist who writes excellent, captivating prose. Heartbeats in the Muck came out in 1999, and it’s stood up very well. It continues to be the first book I lend anyone interested in the strange, obscure underwater world lurking just below New York City’s piers and pilings. Running Silver, which was released more recently, is Waldman’s compelling account of the destruction of the great fish migrations that once graced rivers up and down the Atlantic coast, and recent efforts to restore them. When he’s not writing, Waldman is either fishing, wading into rivers and estuaries for research, or in the classroom teaching aquatic biology at Queens College.

The Meadowlands by Robert Sullivan ($14)

Sullivan’s urban travel log will make you want to set out for the natural landscapes of the great west (New Jersey). This book has pirates, mosquitos, urban archeology, the story of first mine in America, and all kinds of odd, backwater history involving development, ecology, and more in a vast, hidden marshy wilderness just a few minutes west of New York City. I’ve also enjoyed Sullivan’s more recent history of the real American West, Double Exposure, although it has less to do with the themes of this newsletter!

The Bottom of the Harbor - Joseph Mitchell ($7-$35 - prices vary for used books)

Truth be told: the stories in this book (there are 6) are all collected in a section of Up in the Old Hotel, the comprehensive Joseph Mitchell tome that includes all (or nearly all) of his work from the New Yorker during his long tenure as a staff writer there. But these stories were sold separately for a while, and I first encountered them in a cute little edition that I’ve since lent away to someone who is probably reading this letter now (give it back, whoever you are). The case for buying this smaller book as opposed to the larger Mitchell collection is that it deals exclusively with New York Harbor and the surrounding environment, and as a gift, feels a little more personal.

The Seabird’s Cry- Adam Nicholson ($14)

This book about seabirds is one of my favorite nonfiction books about birds. Each chapter deals with a bird family, from cormorants, to gannets, to shearwaters, to puffins, approaching the broad, amazing world of birds that swim and fly across open oceans, nest on seaside cliffs, and otherwise live in the sea from a variety of fascinating angles. Nicholson is a really sharp writer with a broad appreciation for literature and history, which livens up the science.

How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler ($12)

On numerous occasions in my life as a journalist, I think I’ve come up with a great story about the ocean, only to quickly learn with a google search that Sabrina Imbler has beaten me to the punch (sometimes by like a day). Sabrina’s beautiful memoir is intricately woven with stories about marine life. I’d also recommend subscribing to their newsletter Creatures of NYC where, in addition to getting into some fun, outside-the-box ways to observe wildlife in New York (mothing?), they diligently catalog upcoming opportunities to get out on nature walks (some of which are led by me!)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

You don’t need to hear me tell you that Moby Dick is good, but it really is good. Nobody’s going to give you points for originality if you give this book as a gift, but on the flip side, it’s probably the best novel ever written, so how disappointed can they really be? If you want to give a more…special, personal gift, but still want that gift to be the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, consider buying a nicer hardcover print of the 1930 edition with Rockwell Kent’s glorious illustrations.

The Rings of Saturn - W.G. Sebald ($15)

It’s a coastal history of Suffolk, and an elliptical memoir, and a walking tour, and a ghost story. It’s got Opium Wars, and dying fishing towns, and fascinating digressions about Joseph Conrad’s life as a captain. My favorite book by Sebald, and probably the lightest in tone (which isn’t saying much), The Rings of Saturn is a completely different book every time I read it.

Skinny Dip -or- Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen ($10-20)

At some point, there will be an entire letter devoted to the genius of Carl Hiaasen, the long-time Miami Herald investigative journalist who wrote dozens of sublime Florida detective novels (dare I say, he invented …Noir-ida?) set on the Keys in his free time. Skinny Dip and Tourist Season are two that stood out for me, but if you like these, there’s a whole world of alligators, everglades, and Hawaiian shirts waiting for you.

FIELD GUIDES:

There isn’t enough room in my apartment for all of the field guides I own, let alone in this newsletter. This is not a comprehensive list of good field guides, or of field guides I recommend, or even of field guides about the water I recommend. These are just a handful of standouts about sea life that I believe people will enjoy if they receive them as gifts.

Atlantic Seashore by Peterson Guides (prices vary)

An impressively comprehensive illustrated guide to everything from crabs, to seashells, to algae, to barnacles. Anyone who likes walking on the beach and picking up odds and ends will enjoy this book. Every time I’ve found something that I believed had to be too obscure for this book, I was wrong. Give it with a little pail if you want to go crazy. (Note: for some reason, many websites, including Amazon, are offering this guide for like $50. I linked a thrift books page that has it for as little as $7, but I’m not sure what’s going on there. It looks like there are a few editions of this floating around. I can only vouch for the one with the crab on the cover. I’d say… proceed with caution? It truly is a great book, though.)

The Shorebird Guide- by Michael O’Brien, Richard Crossley, and Kevin T. Karlson ($28)

This is one of the better, more original field guides I’ve ever seen, and uses photographs in a way that leans into the ambiguity and difficulty of identifying these birds. The guide builds as you go, giving you an expanding toolbox with which to approach the gorgeous, increasingly-difficult photographs that feature more and more species the further you read. This shouldn’t be the first field guide to birds that someone owns, but anyone who birds regularly in the United States will appreciate it.

BONUS:

Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb ($24)

While not exclusive to wetland or shoreline habitats, this little guide to the wildflowers of the Northeast is my favorite field guide, mostly because of its excellent diegetic key, beautiful illustrations, and compact size. It makes a great gift for literally anyone over 13 years old.

Wild NYC by Ryan Mandelbaum ($28 preorder)

This upcoming local field guide won’t be out until after the holidays, but if you want a copy (and you should) you can preorder it here. If you can’t wait until April, for the book, you can subscribe to Ryan’s own nature newsletter eyy i’m walkin here in the meantime.

Golden Guides: (prices vary)

These vintage field guides for kids are the best, and can be bought used in bulk all over Etsy.

MISCELLANEOUS HOW-TO:

Creative Anchoring- by Captain Fatty Goodlander ($9.99)

A bizarrely enjoyable book about anchoring sailboats written by an eccentric, likable sea-bum of captain who has sailed around the world twice on a shoestring budget, the first time without an engine on board. If you know someone who sails, or spends time on boats, they’ll love this, but it’s also full of fun, miscellaneous adventure writing, maritime history, and sensible advice about safety during emergencies that plenty of people will find interesting.

Why Knot? by Philippe Petit ($25)

Philippe Petit is best known for his illegal high-wire act between the Twin Towers in the 1970’s, but he also put together this great little book about knots that features all the classics, as well as a range of more obscure knots that will interest anyone who likes climbing, sailing, or just messing around with line. The book comes with a nice piece of red line for practice. Great for children.

Cookbooks and other Kitchen Stuff:

Fish and Shellfish by James Peterson ($35 new)

Disclaimer: this book is from 1996 and includes all sorts of strange, outdated ways of looking at seafood. It has some recipes that nobody would ever make today. But it also contains tons of information, including guides to buying and filleting different kinds of fish, as well as interesting, obscure, and delicious seafood recipes. It’s also a nice physical object, with a cool cover, which is always good when you’re giving someone a gift. I think of it as a kind of garage sale of seafood recipes. Peterson’s other book Splendid Soups is similar (and another beloved staple in my kitchen).

50 Chowders by Jasper White ($24 new)

Hands down the best book on making chowder, with some informative writing about New England’s culinary heritage scattered throughout. Don’t complain if you buy this book and then see similar recipes and techniques being shared here on Landlubber. In addition to the eponymous 50 chowder recipes, the book also has some great recipes for tasty side dishes.

Homemade Dashi Kit - (est. $10-50)

One of the great things about dashi, the simple, two-ingredient Japanese fish broth that makes up the base of an infinite array of delicious soups (including miso soup) is that neither of the ingredients needs to be refrigerated. You can buy kombu seaweed and dried bonito flakes at lots of grocery stores. Add hot water to those ingredients, and you’ve got dashi! This makes it very easy to give the gift of dashi in a fun, affordable gift basket.

Package the kombu and bonito flakes together in a little basket with a handwritten dashi recipe (steal mine below if you want), then find a soup recipe (or make one up) that can be assembled relatively easily once the dashi is made. If you want to get more elaborate, you can include some dry ingredients in the basket, too. Things that would go great are rice noodles, soba noodles, fancy dark soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, dried seaweed, and dried mushrooms. While most miso paste should be refrigerated, some brands (like this one) come in well-sealed packages that can stay at room temperature until you open them. This gift could also go nicely with good soup bowls, soup spoons, or chopstick holders.

Dashi recipe, for the lazy:

Steep dried kombu in a large pot of cold water (5-6 quarts) for 1 hour

Bring pot to a boil on low heat, slowly (should take about 15-20 minutes)

When water boils, add 1-2 cups dried bonito flakes and stir.

Turn off burner and let steep for 10 minutes.

Strain out bonito and kombu.

Use within 3 days unless freezing

For the Wall:

Framed Rockwell Kent Moby Dick Print (prices vary)

The art that Rockwell Kent produced for the above-mentioned 1930 re-release of Moby Dick is some of the coolest shit on earth. I linked a random eBay page here, but there are plenty of websites that let you order framed prints of famous artwork. All of these sites are a little shady, and in my opinion, you should avoid using them to purchase any art being produced by a living artist, which is basically stealing. But Rockwell Kent is dead, and if you look at his life, which was full of swashbuckling adventures and fighting for good causes, I think it’s safe to say he’d be alright with you grabbing a bootleg print as a gift.

DIY Shadow Box: ($5-10 in materials, plus hours of beachcombing)

If you, like me, have too many seashells around, one great way to get rid of them (and create an excellent gift in the process) is to glue them onto a shadow box in a visually pleasing way, and then give the shadow box away. Shadowboxes can be purchased from Michaels at relatively low-cost. Buy at least one extra box for practice and if you’re shopping online, make sure you look very carefully at the size of the shadow box you’re buying, as well as the background material. I also recommend getting a hot glue gun that isn’t just the crappiest, cheapest one available, which often, in my experience, doesn’t get the glue hot enough to really stick something on.

Clothing and Gear:

L.L. Bean Chest Waders: ($189)

It’s tough to buy something for someone who goes fishing, and unless you’re shopping for a close friend with whom you regularly fish, it’s probably a bad idea to buy lures or any other fishing gear. Everybody loves waders, though. While L.L. Bean has long since ended their ironclad return/repair policy, they’re still pretty great when something breaks down, and waders get the shit beaten out of them.

Kamik waterproof boots: ($69)

These boots are warm, and have a little rainfly at the top that you can tighten around your calf. You can walk in over a foot of water in them, and they’re way less intense than wearing chest-waders. They’re not exactly going to pass for everyday fashion-wear, but they kill in stormy weather, as well as any kind of outdoor adventure that involves romping around in mud or water.

Black Diamond Astro 300 Headlamp: ($20)

I love this headlamp, and I use it for all kinds of stuff, but the thing I use it for most is walking around at night by the water and illuminating the water-worlds below piers. Black diamond makes several headlamps that are more expensive than this one; some get a little brighter, while others allow you to recharge them instead of replacing AAA batteries. I like this one fine!