The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: July tenth, toasting mellow marshes.

Last time, we visited several of America's wild beaches and barrier islands. One characteristic most share is proximity to a salt marsh. Barrier islands and salt marshes go together; they're part of the same ocean dynamic, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Marshes have long been dismissed as wasteland, insect breeding grounds good only for landfills and reclamation. But that notion has changed. In fact, salt marshes may be our most important ecosystem, and, when seen with appreciative eyes, one of our most beautiful.

As hurricanes demonstrate each year, barrier islands serve as bastions against the power of sea and storm, buffering the mainland against erosion. Because marshes are where abundant sea life gains access to nutrients washed from the land, they're also incredibly productive places. Three decades ago, scientists found that an acre of salt marsh sustains six times as much life as an acre of Midwestern wheatfield, the land normally regarded as America's breadbasket.

Marshes also support birds in abundance, both year-round residents and migrants. Seventy percent of all the ocean's creatures either spend part of their life in salt marshes or feed on animals that do. Spartina, the salt-tolerant sea grass, makes it all possible. Its roots bind the sand and its dead stalks provide the organic material that is the lowest link on a long food chain.

Buggy but beautiful, salt marshes are great places to behold the mysteries of life.

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