BOOK REVIEW: Enough berries to stain a hoof

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By Marion Elizabeth Rodgers

PARADISE FOUND: NATURE IN AMERICA AT THE TIME OF DISCOVERY

By Steve Nicholls

University of Chicago Press, $30, 524 pages

Reviewed by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers

"Paradise Found" is one of the best books I have read in years. The book guides us easily through the North Atlantic, the East Coast, subtropical Caribbean, the West Coast, Baja California and the Great Plains, seamlessly blending firsthand accounts from historical journals, personal anecdotes and the latest scientific inquiry. Wildlife filmmaker and entomologist Steve Nicholls paints a picture of 500 years of people and nature, giving us a time machine tour of our continent's abundant past.

And what an abundance there was! Meadows full of ducks, forests filled with all kinds of berries and nuts -- oaks, pecans and most plentiful of all, the American chestnut. Those forests were not the same as we know today. These were natural cathedrals, with green roofs arching 50 feet above one's head; giant trunks measured more than 20 feet in circumference. So many strawberries littered the ground that one naturalist noted his horse's hooves were being stained red with their juice. At the mouth of a river was an island filled with so many egrets that it looked as if it were blanketed with snow.

When migrating birds passed overhead, the sky darkened as if there had been an eclipse. Nesting colonies of passenger pigeons measured 40 miles long and six miles wide; roosting flocks literally broke off the branches of trees. Bison roamed as far east as New York; porpoises swam in the freshwater lakes of North Carolina; great shoals of cod, mackerel, sea bass and eels infested the sea. On the Chesapeake Bay, 193 square miles of oyster reefs covered the bottom of the bay and river channels, so thick they posed a hazard to ships; Colonists remarked on the clarity and purity of the water.

Some naturalists, among them John James Audubon, were so awe-struck they thought it would strain credibility to describe what they saw. Mr. Nicholls has done a careful job of sifting through their reports, discarding the erroneous (such as a porcupine laying eggs).

"Paradise Found" draws upon human ecology in its broadest sense, so that anthropology, social history, economics and biology are all given equal measure. The result is an entertaining and powerful book, celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. In each chapter, Mr. Nicholls manages to overturn widely held beliefs, ranging from Native Indian land management, to the disappearance of the Carolina parakeet, to the reason why fisheries so often fail.

With the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers came "something that might be called Christian capitalism -- a free market backed by the conviction that the natural world was made for human benefit alone." (Those giant trees were the attraction -- and their disappearance the ultimate undoing -- for the ivory billed woodpecker.) Exploitation and squander continues unabated today.

Disease, the introduction of non-native species, emotional misconceptions about "devils" in paradise (the gray wolf being just one example) sadly go on, not only in North America but in other parts of the world. As the author reminds us, the interaction of nature is complex and varied, with a system that does not behave in predictable way.

"We have diminished nature far more than most people know," Mr. Nicholls writes, especially in the ocean. Different factors work in tandem, so that the disappearance of one member of the species affects another. This was brought home to Mr. Nicholls while traveling through Eastern Europe. "Thanks to the poverty of the farmers unable to afford trailer loads of insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers," he was astounded by the sheer volume and variety of birdsong. "I had just taken a step backward in time," he notes.

His mind wandered: What was nature like a century ago, five centuries ago? Digging into the journals and diaries of explorers and settlers, he became convinced if more people knew the true vitality of nature, they would not only be awed, but be reminded of the sheer scale of our impact on the planet -- and be spurred to repair the damage. Environmental awareness is not new, but as Mr. Nicholls states, "our mentality has been to preserve and isolate sections of nature, in national parks or wilderness areas, separate from the human world."

We city folk have grown so apart from nature that I wonder how many comprehend how much has been lost from our own backyards. Here in Georgetown, the cocoon where I live, neighbors shop at eco-friendly Whole Foods, yet, in apparent disconnect, chop down century-old trees and spray pesticides on their properties, replacing soil with cement and trees with clumps of liriope. Is it any wonder that the amount and variety of songbirds have steadily diminished, while the pesky mosquito remains?

This detached attitude is, in no small way, responsible for the scale of effects Mr. Nicholls outlines in his book. "The bottom line is that we are just one part of nature," he writes, and the sooner we become enlightened with that humbling realization, the sooner we can bring about a balance to our immediate environment and beyond.

In presenting his hopeful message, Mr. Nicholls does not oversimplify, nor does he dictate. The narrative of "Paradise Found" is lucid, never precious, nor is it dense with scientific jargon. As director and writer of wildlife documentaries for the Smithsonian Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic, and PBS' "Nature," Mr. Nicholls writes vividly, so much so that one forgets not a single illustration graces this remarkable book. Like another British naturalist, Gerald Durrell, Mr. Nicholls writes with wit and charm (he credits his wife for knowing when a decent cabernet sauvignon was the only thing to keep the project on its course.)

In former times, the high caliber of this book would have borne the Knopf logo. And while the University of Chicago Press has done a handsome job, the fact it was not released by a mainstream house says volumes about the sad demise of the trade.

Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, a biographer and author of several books, lives in Washington.