RIVER OF LAKES

On a slow poke by kayak down Florida’s St. Johns River, journalist Belleville listens attentively and yearningly for biophilic strains from the historic waterway. In an effort to learn what provoked such passion in its chroniclers—it was the first great river in North America explored by Europeans—Belleville went looking for the old, wild St. Johns and found it very much alive and well: a bracing surprise considering all the insults the river has endured over the years. But the developers and de-waterers were stopped in time, Belleville reports, and enlightened public policy now shepherds the river toward reclamation. Belleville floats the length of the river, taking careful note of, and tendering some background information on, plant and animal life. This he mixes with material he has read on the earlier natural history of the basin, written by such explorer-naturalists as William Bartram and Archie Carr, who seem to be almost at Belleville’s shoulder as he points out snail kites on the prowl for apple snails, or the unlikely riverbed fellowship of freshwater grass shrimp with southern stingrays. Belleville is especially captivated by the upper reaches of the river, where the fresh and salt waters commingle and spawn a wonderfully diverse habitat——places of discovery”—and the opportunities for intimate surprise and whimsy are greater than the broad avenue of the lower river. Down there, Belleville busies himself with a cabal of blackwater tributaries, while on the main stream he witnesses the sort of environmental degradation, stemming from both human tinkering and outright pollution, now checked in the upper river. Belleville reveals the waterway’s exotic voluptuousness—it is the kind of place that songbirds flock to in winter—in writing that is silvery and appealingly unrehearsed (if occasionally overburdened with meaning), two qualities much in keeping with the milieu. Belleville creates in the reader a protective affection for the St. Johns, all any river can ask of its lover.