Now Available New (2012) Book
THE WATER CLOSET
Ipswich River Watershed and Beyond
by Pike Messenger
Since 2005 the Middleton Stream Team, an active volunteer group with the broad purposes of environmental stewardship, conservation, public service and education in Massachusetts’ Ipswich River Watershed, has produced a wide ranging weekly called The Water Closet on water-related subjects from local to worldwide. It is primarily published for residents in the watershed but we now have readers in far-away places, served by our Email. Water Closet essays are published by the area’s community newspaper, the Tri-Town Transcript and the Ipswich River Watershed Association. Over the years readers have encouraged us and author Pike Messenger to put these essays together in a book. The publication effort leading to this book was initiated in 2009 with funds for the purpose set aside from a retirement party for Pike’s service to the town as Middleton’s Conservation Commission Agent. The Commission’s secretary Joan Caulfield and weekly reviewer John Bacon prepared the manuscript, and Jill Buchanan of Zoom Consulting, Gloucester, put it into publishing form this summer. The book is now available at a cost of $20 through area non-profits: The Middleton Stream Team, Middleton Historical Society, Massachusetts Audubon at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, Essex County Greenbelt, and Ipswich River Watershed Association. All book sales receipts above publication and printing costs go to the participating non-profit organizations.
300 essays published from 2006 through 2011 cover a wide range of “wet” subjects from alewives, to glacier sculpted local landscapes, to Indian and Colonial land use, to local water animals and plants, to floods, etc. Because we are again, after 400 years, in a time of beavers, these amazing animals and their works are often featured. Since the Stream Teamers’ prime wading and paddling grounds are the wetlands, tributaries and river many essays have arisen from year round explorations of them.
Every now and then tucked among the essays are what unenlightened skeptics of the environmental movement would call rants. There are also poems and reviews of recent books on watery subjects. A score of pictures by local photographers grace the pages
Pike Messenger, author of the essays, has spent a lifetime near water. His boyhood playground and farm fields were along and in the salt marshes of the Merrimack River estuary. In the Navy he served on two ships in the Pacific. Returning to civilian life he taught 30 years of high school biology at Melrose High School and Triton Regional School on the edge of the Parker River estuary in Byfield. After teaching he served Middleton for 14 years as Conservation Agent. Natural history, social history, biology, geology, rowing, paddling, conservation, gardening and hiking have been lifelong interests.
To order your copy contact the Stream Team or pick up at any of the groups listed above. To order from the Middleton Stream Team simply contact Pike at 978-774-1507, Pikemid@verizon.net, or 32 Boston Street, Middleton, MA 01949. ($20 if picked up or delivered locally. $24 if mailed. Make checks out to the Middleton Stream Team.)
Middleton Stream Team
President John Bacon
I am the great grandson of Edward Colby Robbins, who was Harlan Kelsey’s partner in their nursery in North Carolina, Gardens of the Blue Ridge. Loren Wood visited our nursery last year and met our Mother, Katy Robbins Fletcher, and spent some time sharing many parts of his book Beautiful Land of the Sky which she had sent to him when he was writing his book. My siblings and I would like to bring our Mother to visit this Spring and see some of the plants that we still sell at our nursery.