Chapter 3 Summary

"About the Fens"

This chapter is the first of the natural history essays delivered by Crick in "Waterland." In a detailed, yet emotionally detached dissertation, Crick begins by describing the Fens as a place that is not quite solid, a mixture of water and silt. The silts that wash into the rivers and canals of the Fens created over time the rich, fertile peat from which the Fen people grew wonderful vegetables to sustain themselves, and barley to brew excellent beers. Crick describes the process of dredging silt and maintaining the canals and sluices as the constant process and the progress of reclamation.

Crick describes his own family over the period of years as having made their own transformation, from water people to that of either land people, or perhaps, like most of the images in the Fens, that of an amphibious people...