Excerpt from Deep & Wild Featured in Belt

Big thanks to Belt Magazine for featuring an excerpt from “To Catch a Craw” the first essay in Laura Jackson’s debut, Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia! A perfect example of Laura’s humorous, place-based work, readers get a lesson on the crawdad (or, crayfish, if you must) and how to go about catching yourself one,

To catch a craw, my sons told me, you really need to commit. They hide under flat rocks, but it’s rarely a simple lift-and-catch. When the rock comes up, a billowing cloud of sediment obscures the riverbed and your intended target, and in that moment, they bolt. Craw escape by propelling themselves backward, tails tucked, at astonishing speed. Experienced craw hunters may have a net ready, especially if they can anticipate which direction the animal is going to go, but this is difficult when the silt clouds your view. It takes dexterity and practice.

Head to Belt‘s website to read the full excerpt! And if you don’t have a copy of Deep & Wild, be sure to pick one up before the holidays.