DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997                TAG: 9703310218

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

BADGER'S WORDS SHOW HIS RESPECT FOR TURF

Admiring the eye of Curtis J. Badger is easy.

It is so evident in the naturalist's new collection of essays, Bellevue Farm: Exploring Virginia's Coastal Countryside (Stackpole Books, 115 pp., $19.95).

This quiltlike account of his comings and goings on a 1,200-acre segment of salt marsh is redolent with sharp observation.

Instead of a gun, he employed binoculars in stalking the wild, and we benefit from Badger's four-year odyssey inward.

The Onancock author well understands the importance of detail, to wit:

``At the edge of the marsh was a great blue heron, a stern-looking bird that paced the shallows like an impatient schoolmarm. The bird froze as a setter might, looking up on point as it spied a bluefish among the brown leaf litter on the creekbottom. It struck with surprising speed, shook its great head side to side, flipped the minnow to a headfirst position, and then downed it with the dispatch of a shop owner ringing up a sale.''

Badger, 52, sees nature the way a seasoned reference librarian sees books - with affection, precision and acuity.

He grew up on the Eastern Shore, attended Emory & Henry College, served four years in the Air Force and came back to the barrier islands of his upbringing, where he has made a living ever since as a writer and photographer.

Bellevue Farm is dedicated to his wife, Lynn, and their son, Tom, who routinely tramp these grounds in his company.

The farm, owned by The Nature Conservancy, is part of the Virginia Coast Reserve, which comprises upwards of 45,000 acres and 50 miles of coastline.

Bellevue was once the home of Col. William Parramore, who participated in the American move toward independence, and his son, Thomas, who fought in the Revolution.

Both are buried here.

And so, through Badger's gimlet eye, we come to appreciate and respect this turf and, through it, all turfs.

But the almost subliminal brilliance of the volume lies in the equal keenness of the author's ear. With his binoculars, Badger carried a tape recorder into which he noted his perceptions. Listen to the consequence in his prose:

``Yellowlegs whistle at me when I walk the shoreline.''

The lilting l's carry counterpoint and closure to the whispering w's in that sentence which, typically, seems so guileless yet has to have been worked upon like high finish on fine furniture.

Now hear this:

``A slender stick of fatwood contains about a century's worth of resins from the southern yellow pine, and it gets a fire going quicker than anything I've found.''

The sibilants of this pared passage are fenced and formed by the framing of the f's.

And Badger's eye, ear and encyclopedic understanding come together in informative passages like this:

``The hawk's scream is apparently intended to lure small mammals out of hiding, to arouse their curiosity as to what misfortune might have befallen one of their own, much like humans are attracted to car crashes and fires.''

And this:

``The hardshell clam of the coast, Mercenaria mercenaria, was so named because the shells were used as money.''

What Curtis Badger provides is not only arresting instruction on the Eastern Shore, but also a master class in the craft of writing. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia

Wesleyan College.

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