Imagine the density of litter was birds and mammals. That’s what our world was like.
I haven’t posted about the book The Once and Future World by podcast guest J. B. MacKinnon lately, but it’s one of the more eye-opening books I’ve found on the environment. He asked, researched, and answered how nature looked before modernity impinged on it. In case you worried, he qualified that nature didn’t exist in a perfect state, let alone a static one. It changed all the time.
Still, he pointed out how much more life there was:
Sailing ships at sea remote from land got stuck because the density of fish was that great.
Today we get excited to see a whale. Captains’ logs described seeing whales as far as the eye could see, all day long.
Fish swimming up the Hudson River to spawn caused tidal waves they were so numerous.
There were walruses on the Thames River by London.
Beavers were as large as cars.
I remember those examples off the top of my head, hopefully accurate, but the book contained more.
I thought of it recently because I recently heard about how many buffalo existed in North America. I heard a description of a herd of buffalo 50 miles long and 25 miles wide, so densely packed you couldn’t see ground between them. A person on top of a hill that they passed around said they could only see buffalo in every direction.
Imagine the density of litter was birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, etc
The description got me thinking and comparing with what I see everywhere today: litter. It hit me that there was probably more mammalian life then than there is litter today.
A big fur trade grew around here, meaning much of eastern North America. There were mammals everywhere. Imagine the density of litter was birds and mammals. I think that’s what our world was like. The way children today probably think garbage everywhere is normal and always has been, our ancestors figured that density of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and so on, plus a lot more old-growth forests and deeper top soil was normal too.
They probably thought it would last forever. What would they think of a world so barren of beavers, birds, snakes, and bison?
What would they think of this scene? Do you see anything living in it? Or even a place for life to take root and grow?
This garbage is the remnants of a celebration. Can you imagine what they would think of a celebration with no life? How did being surrounded by garbage become acceptable for celebration or anything else?
Now imagine that scene replacing the pavement with lush grass, maybe some berry plants or other edible plants, and each piece of litter a living animal. Let’s restore that world.
Video reminders of The Once and Future World
If you haven’t read the book, here are a couple videos I made of it followed by my first podcast recording with J. B.
Retry later