Diamonds in the Marsh: A Natural History of the Diamondback Terrapin Book

This collection of seventeen essay-memoirs covers topics about father figures, reflections on being a writer, one's relationship with nature, urban verses rural living and… Ultimate. The individual essays are broken into four sections - I. "Sick" (which contains "Ultimate Glory"), II. "Getting Personal", III. "Back to Nature" and IV. "Howling with the Trickster".

The book, in its entirety, doesn't have much to do specifically with Ultimate, but one essay, "Ultimate Glory: A Frisbee Memoir" does reflect on the author's experience playing competitively in college and with some of Boston's top teams in the 80s (I've read a couple of the other essays in the work, but mainly enjoyed this one).

I connected with the first two sentences right off, "we labor over our big decisions and big dreams, but sometimes it's the small things that change our lives forever. What could be smaller than this: It is the first week of my freshman year of college and I, looking for a sport to play, am walking down to the boathouse for crew, resigning myself to four years of servitude as a galley slave, when I see a Frisbee flying across the street" (p. 46). I started playing Ultimate in High School, but remember falling in love with the sport in a similar way, and it, too, has become such a huge part of my life.

In the following pages, Gessner hits upon many of the typical experiences an Ultimate player encounters: the sport's eclectic mix of "semi-athletic half-hippies", serious jocks, pick-up jokesters, etc.; the "mysterious motivation… to give up the normal benefits of life to chase plastic"; the unbridled immersion into a sport that is more of a lifestyle choice; the confusion of parents and non-players when you mention anything to do with Ultimate; the mythic stories about the sport told between players; the struggles the sport and its players face in cleaning up the image of Ultimate; and the wonderfully close-knit community that Ultimate creates.

I truly believe that it would be hard to find an Ultimate player who wouldn't connect with at least some of the memories Gessner recounts in this essay.


This is an excerpt from my full review on my blog, High Release Handler.