A luminous and revelatory journey into the science of life and the depths of the human experience

When the biologists Aaron Hirsh and Veronica Volny, along with their friend Graham Burnett, a historian of science, lead twelve college students to a remote fishing village on the Sea of Cortez, they come upon a bay of dazzling beauty and richness. But as the group pursues various threads of investigation—ecological and evolutionary studies, the stories of the villagers, the journals of conquistadors—they recognize that the bay, spectacular and pristine though it seems, is but a ghost of what it once was.
     It is a painful realization, but the travelers’ experiences also reveal a way forward. After weathering a great hurricane and facing a rare whale that follows in its wake, they realize that the bay’s best chance of recovery may in fact reside in our own human stories, which can reweave a compelling memory of the place. But the most surprising discovery is that those tales lead also to other frontiers with which we’ve unwittingly lost touch: one another and, ultimately, ourselves.
     In Telling Our Way to the Sea, Hirsh’s voice resounds with depth and compassionate humanity. This is science writing of the very first order, transcending the genre to become literature.