Reading natural history is fraught with a particular kind of peril. The typical progression from “here are amazing facts” to “there used to be [X] million of these majestic creatures, until humans wiped them out” is a disappointing road.

Frances Backhouse’s “Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver” starts down that path, but the story ends in a slightly more upbeat place. The once ubiquitous beaver was nearly exterminated from North America in a shockingly narrow window of time -- John James Audubon could not find one on his journey up the Missouri River in 1843, and he spent eight months looking -- but now people make a living trapping them as “nuisances.”

How did we get here? Backhouse tells readers the story by tracing humans‘ 15,000-year relationship with the beaver, from interdependence with humans chronicled in First Nation stories to present-day trapping.

Backhouse, a creative-nonfiction teacher who lives in Victoria, British Columbia, listens to Tlingit stories and songs in the Yukon, watches hat-makers in Calgary, tromps the Skagit River delta and hangs out at a fur-trading post in Saskatchewan. In one cringe-worthy chapter, she learns to skin a beaver. “I was glad to have had the opportunity -- it was history made tangible, biology made intimate -- but I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a trapper,” she writes. (TNS)