Classic Nature Journal: Tall trees of the Smokies inspired early naturalists – Citizen Times

George Ellison| Nature Journal

Ornithologist and artist Roger Tory Peterson had at least four publishers turn him down before Houghton Mifflin agreed to give his book proposal a modest try. In 1934, the publisher printed 2,000 copies of a manual with mostly black-and-white illustrations titled "A Field Guide to the Birds, Including All Species Found in Eastern North America."

The first printing sold out within two weeks, launching Peterson's career as the most celebrated American ornithologist of the modern era. The four editions of "A Field Guide to the Birds" published during his lifetime sold more than 5 million copies.

Peterson also wrote or edited nearly 50 other books, including a series of Houghton Mifflin natural history guides numbering 21 volumes known as the Peterson Field Guide Series. In the opinion of many, his most engaging book is "Wild America: The Record of a 30,000-Mile Journey Around the Continent by a Distinguished Naturalist and his British Colleague," published in 1955. The "British colleague" was James M.C. Fisher. It relates the now-legendary 1953 trek from Newfoundland's coastline to the Great Smokies and South Florida, then down into Mexico and, finally, up the West Coast to Alaska made by two of the 20th century's most competent field naturalists.

Fisher was a broadcaster, naturalist and writer. A leading authority on the natural history traditions of his country, he made more than 1,000 radio and TV broadcasts on nature-related topics, especially ornithology. His writing and broadcasting played a role in the growth of interest in bird-watching in the United Kingdom during the 20th century, similar to Peterson's impact in the United States. He died in a car crash in 1970.

In the prologue to "Wild America," Peterson noted that since Fisher had escorted him on field trips throughout "wild Europe," he told his colleague: "If you come to America, I will conduct you around the continent and you will see a more complete cross section of wild America than any other Englishman, and all but a few North Americans, have ever seen."

"Wild America" is the record of that journey woven together from their combined notes. It was made in Peterson's "new, shiny green Ford country sedan, seventeen feet long, loaded with gear." Despite Fisher's sharp wit, which could be barbed at times, and Peterson's self-admitted temper, they got along well. For anyone interested in natural history, "Wild America" is a compelling book. Here is Fisher's awed description as if he were an Alice lost in a wonderland of his first venture into a cove hardwood forest deep in the Smokies:

"April rained itself out in the small hours of the first of May and the morning sun, shining down from blue sky, sparkled in thousands of raindrop lenses. Quickly the forest dried as we drove up the middle prong of the Pigeon River, swollen with rain from the Tennessee slopes of those great wooded hills, LeConte and Chapman. Led by Arthur Stupka and his wife and the Glidden Baldwins, who are authorities on the big trees of the Smokies, we left the cars near the meeting of two streams which had cut down to staircases of smooth, pebble-worn rock, all overhung by the forest hemlocks, and giant shiny-leaved rhododendrons. It was a steamy valley, cushioned with moss and full of the good smell of rotting wood. To our north rose Greenbrier Pinnacle, to our south all 6,430 feet of Mount Chapman. As we took the trail up the Ramsay Prong the valley closed in, and the forest grew bigger, and wilder. ...

"Near the beginning of the trail a tulip tree towered higher than any tree I had even seen in Britain; and from then on big trees of at least six kinds thrust up from the tangled forest floor for about a hundred feet or more. The forest track wound under them, through dense undergrowth; rhododendrons of enormous size formed dark jungles through which our uphill trail became a leafy tunnel.

"Every now and then we paused like dwarfs at the foot of some great bole: a Canada hemlock the big Tsuga Canadensis 8 feet or more across at the roots, and five at man height; a tremendous silverbell; a pair of yellow buckeyes, each nearly 100 feet high; vast smooth-trunked beeches; the biggest maple tree I had ever seen, a sugar maple; and a 70-foot wild pin-cherry, the grandfather of all cherry trees, whose top was lost in the green canopy and whose lowest branch, a great horizontal arm, must have been 40 feet above us . . .

"Leaving the great forest was like coming out of a dream; not a sinister dream, for there is nothing terrifying in the grandeur of Great Smoky's deciduous woodland. It is just big beyond belief, and benign in its bigness. I thought it was the most beautiful forest I had ever seen."

George Ellison is an award-winningnaturalist and writer. His wife, ElizabethEllison, is a painter and illustratorwho has a gallery studio at 155 Main St.,Bryson City. Contact them at info@georgeellison.com or info@elizabethellisongallery.comor write to 3880 Balltown Road, Bryson City, NC 28713.

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Classic Nature Journal: Tall trees of the Smokies inspired early naturalists - Citizen Times