Are you ready for a little armchair rescue from winter’s inevitable gray days? Here are three green books to chase the gray away. Ocean, rivers, mountains, wildlife, here we come!

“Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer” by Bren Smith, 2019, Alfred A. Knopf

Long Island Sound fed Connecticut’s Native Americans for millennia before settlers arrived, and it feeds us today. Unfortunately, today’s fish and shellfish harvests are minnow-sized compared to days gone by.

Is there hope for a rebound? According to local author and commercial ocean farmer Bren Smith, there is.

Smith developed a style of seafood production he calls “restorative ocean farming,” one that rotates a winter-grown sea vegetable, sugar kelp, with oysters, mussels, and scallops. Ocean farming, as he envisions it, takes place on an original vertical floating structure that not only provides food to consumers and livelihoods to ocean farmers, but also helps aerate the water, sequester carbon, and absorb nutrients from terrestrial runoff.

Smith tells the tale of his breakthrough through the unpolished lens of his own life story. It begins in Newfoundland and unfolds on many other shorelines, including Massachusetts, Alaska, and finally, Connecticut.

Setbacks? He’s had a few. Some were self-inflicted, but many arrived on the waves that rock the destiny of today’s commercial fisheries. With each setback, he finds his way back to the sea, each time deepening the awareness that brought him closer to where he is today: an ocean farmer who owns the Thimble Islands Oyster Company off the coast of Branford.

I first learned about Smith’s work through greenwave.org, a New Haven nonprofit he helped found. GreenWave offers aspiring ocean farmers the information, tools and technology to launch ocean farms. Smith’s innovation resulted in several awards and lots of media recognition.

I listened to the audio version, which Smith narrates. Highly recommended.

“Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter” by Ben Goldfarb, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018.

If you think the story of a supersized swimming rodent will put you to sleep, think again. Author Ben Goldfarb places a kaleidoscope on the beaver, turns the lens, and delivers a multi-faceted look at nature’s most exceptional wetland engineer — or most destructive pest, depending on your perspective.

“Eager” starts with the natural history of the beaver, a story with deep ties to the natural history of North America.

Hunting pushed beavers to near extinction in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There were none in Connecticut from the late 1800s until 1914, when a pair was reintroduced in Union, Conn. In the absence of beavers, healthy wetlands decline, bird and fish species decline, and we enter a world with less of the wildlife we love.

Today, beavers have an unsettled relationship with humans. Goldfarb introduces us to scientists, wildlife managers, and beaver fans (“Beaver Believers”), who offer compelling reasons to rehabilitate our attitudes towards the critters and to change the terms of our co-existence.

Bottom line: The planet needs beavers.

If you like to read about natural history, wildlife biology, or ecological restoration, or if you have a difficult relationship with the critters, this award-winning book is likely to both entertain and inform you.

“That Wild Country: An Epic Journey through the Past, Present, and Future of America’s Public Lands” by Mark Kenyon, Little A, 2019

Permanent, it turns out, may not be forever.

In “That Wild Country,” author Mark Kenyon weaves his love for camping, hiking, fishing and hunting on scenic public lands with his deep understanding that he cannot take these landscapes for granted.

He recounts almost 150 years of federal land conservation, including some famous renegade challenges such as those led by Cliven, Ammon and Ryan Bundy. He tallies administration-led reductions, such as the 85% reduction of Bear’s Ears National Monument in 2017.

Note: The best-known public land battles occurred in the western U.S. and Alaska, but the eastern states are not immune. It was only in 2019 that Connecticut, for instance, passed a constitutional amendment that allows public input to public land transfer decisions. Before that, state lands could be swapped or sold exclusively by the legislature.

The biggest threat to public land, Kenyon said, is “death by a thousand cuts.”

Kenyon acknowledged that public land ownership presents a dilemma: if everyone owns the land, who decides on its use? If you are interested in little-known nature destinations, the history of federal land protection, and the future of conserved lands, “That Wild Country” offers them all in Kenyon’s easy-to-read style. Highly recommended.

Kathy Connolly is a writer and speaker from Old Saybrook. For more information, visit her website, speakingoflandscapes.com.