Sometimes the news is good. This soggy winter and spring I tramped the margins of southern San Francisco Bay to witness an unfolding environmental triumph: the conversion of 15,000 acres of former salt ponds into tidal marshes and other habitats vital to birds and an entire ecosystem. The regenerated shoreline fringe will also help buffer South Bay cities from impending sea level rise. I wrote the story as a journalist for the March issue of Estuary News, and seized the opportunity to tell it again, as an essayist and poet, for a book of art photographs of the transforming region (see thumbnail). The artist is Barbara Boissevain; the title, Salt of the Earth; the publisher, Kehrer Verlag of Heidelberg, one of the world’s leading presses for fine photography. Now in production; can’t wait to see the finished product!