Essen releases new book documenting ‘Endangered Edens’

By Michael Howell

It took about nine years for Marty Essen, author of the award winning book, “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents,” to get around to writing another book. But he finally did. And it’s scheduled to hit the bookstores on January 8th. It’s titled “Endangered Edens” and subtitled “Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico” and is published by Encante Press, LLC.
Essen offers a lot of excuses for the long delay and they are all plausible. First of all, he had covered a lot of ground in that first book, literally touching ground on all seven continents. Not only that, during those travels he was stung by one of the world’s most venomous insects, bitten by a poisonous snake, surrounded by wolves, attacked by a hippo—and had the time of his life. Then he put in 13,000 hours writing about it. According to Marty, it all left him feeling “burned out.”
But there was no real rest for the weary as the popularity of his first book immediately launched him on a new career that has kept him running all over the country ever since. It’s a multi-media version of the book called “Around the World in 90 Minutes.” Since 2007 he has been taking his slide show and talk to colleges, museums, and nature centers across the United States. It’s an unforgettable worldwide adventure, packed with excellent photos of rare and interesting wildlife. Marty quickly became the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities’ #1 Booked College Speaker, and since then he has spent a total of 50 months in the #1 position.
However, following a trip to Costa Rica with his wife Deb in 2014, Marty felt reinvigorated and inspired. He felt like writing again. He had slipped “into the zone” as he calls it and started writing again. Not at the same frenzied pace as the last time, but good enough to pound out another book over the course of the next year. Like his last work, this new book is a combination of travelogue/adventure story, wildlife photography and environmental education.
The book is a collection of four stand-alone chapters, each chronicling the trips he took to four different “paradises” (Edens, he calls them). His wife Deb accompanied him on three of the adventures, visiting Puerto Rico, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and the jungles along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. One chapter recounts a solo trip he made to the Florida Everglades, one of his favorite places on earth.
According to Marty, he listened and learned from reviews of his first book. The first book contained about 80 photographs and one constant refrain in the reviews was a desire for more and bigger photos. As a result, his new book contains over 180 photographs, at least one or two on almost every page. Not only that but each page of the book is printed on thick glossy paper that makes the photos shine. It’s the kind of book you can leave out on the coffee table and peruse over and over again, like the National Geographic. The photos are really outstanding.
And then there’s the message about how valuable all these pristine places really are and how fragile. The book is a plea for preserving some of the most precious unspoiled places on earth. Not simply for our relaxation, rejuvenation and enjoyment. But simply for what they are in and of themselves, the most wild places on earth.
The first chapter is about a trip to Puerto Rico that was made just a little while after publishing his first book and was intended to be more of a vacation, more of a rest and recuperation trip than a work trip. But it easily morphed into another adventure into the wild, leading to what Marty calls “one of the most amazing wildlife adventures of my life.” Marty has a particular attraction to, and love for, snakes of all sorts, yes, even the most venomous. But in this case it happened to be the chance to see some big constrictors that drew him on a trip with Dr. Armando Rodriguez to the Mata de Platano Field Station and Nature Reserve, where he visited a bat cave called the Culebrones Cave. It was the home to over 30,000 bats of six different species. And, as Marty puts it, it was “the snake equivalent of a fast food restaurant.” It was here that he witnessed several six-foot-long Puerto Rican boas hanging onto the side of the cave walls by their tails as they snatched bats out of the air as they were flying by.
The trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge took place in 2008. Marty wrote a story about the trip that was published in the Bitterroot Star not long afterward. But he knew for a long time that there was much more to say. And he says it well in his new book and illustrates it with some fine photos, not just of the Alaskan wildlife and vast untrammeled tundra, but of the huge oil fields and the pipelines that have come to dominate the landscape around Prudhoe Bay.
According to Marty, “The Prudhoe Bay oil field was quite possibly the ugliest place I have ever been in my life.” And he shot the photos to prove it.
“So it comes down to American values. Do we value that we still have a special place that looks much like it did before humans arrived, or do we value a policy of doing whatever it takes to fill our tanks with the cheapest possible gasoline? The two values are incompatible,” he writes.
Marty’s solo trip to the Everglades resulted in lots of good pictures of one of his favorite animals, snakes. There are also some great shots of alligators. The trip was sandwiched between two college tour talks and he did not have room on the plane to carry his full-sized digital SLR camera so he had to make do with a small pocket camera and no big lens. It meant he had to get close to the animals for a good picture. But getting close to the subjects he is photographing has always been part of the deal for Marty. He loves to get close to the animals he photographs, even the snakes and the alligators, and watch them for the sheer joy of it. In this case he managed to do quite well without the long lens and got some amazing photos, including a close up of an alligator’s eye that is stunning.
On the trip to Costa Rica, Marty’s penchant for close observation and his desire to get the best shot left him in a slight conundrum when trying to photograph a small Brown Blunt-Headed Vine Snake. Lucky thing his wife was along on that trip. The answer to the conundrum was to gently pick up the snake and hold it in his hand while Deb took the photo. His guide told him that the snake was probably rear-fanged, but he didn’t think it was venomous. Marty found out later that it was. But luckily, the snake’s poison was not strong enough to affect a human.
As it states at the bottom of the credits on the second page of his book, “Some of the activities described in this book are dangerous and not intended for duplication.” The author and the publisher both accept no liability for any injury, loss, or inconvenience sustained by any reader or traveler as a result of what they read.
Marty easily achieves another one of his main aims in writing the book, that is an enjoyable read. According to Marty, you can have good photos and lots of good information but for it to really work, a book has to be fun to read. This one is.
The book is due to be released on January 8. To celebrate the release Marty will be signing books and presenting a short slide show at Chapter One Book Store located at 252 Main Street in Hamilton on Thursday, January 14 at 6 p.m. If you can’t make it that evening, you could attend the book signing and showing to be held the night before, that is, Wednesday January 13, at 7 p.m. at Shakespeare and Company, located at 103 South 3rd Street West in Missoula.