EDWIN WAY TEALE

If I mentioned the name Henry David Thoreau, you'd probably know who he was, or at least you'd think of Walden almost immediately. If I said John Muir, you'd probably come up with Yosemite and the Sierra Club. You might even know Aldo Leopold and A Sand County Almanac. But I'd almost be willing to bet the ranch you've never heard of Edwin Way Teale. And that's a shame.


Teale was a naturalist, photographer and writer--Pulitzer prize winner--who published more than thirty books, starting in 1930 and ending with his death in 1980. The topics of his books were very catholic, although they were all about the natural world in one way or another.

His most famous books were a quartet on the seasons of North America: North with the Spring (1951), Journey Into Summer (1960), Autumn Across America (1956), and Wandering Through Winter (1965), which won the Pulitzer for general non-fiction in 1966.

I bought all four earlier this year--used, to be sure, because none is still in print, more's the pity. I've read the Spring volume and I'm now working on Summer. They're not quick reads because the writing is dense and often a bit turgid, although marvelously descriptive.

Teale and his wife hopped in their car and followed the seasons across the continent, zigging and zagging, logging tens of thousand of miles--and God knows how many notebooks--in the process. It's fortunate Teale started when he did--1947--because there were no interstate highways and very little development outside the major urban centers. Mostly he stuck to those roads Bill Least Heat Moon calls Blue Highways, roads off the beaten path that sometimes lead to nowhere in particular, which is why some of us like to take them.

These are books filled with the wonders of the natural world and the wonder of a human being who is thrilled to be seeing it all. No environmentalist polemics here, just a naturalist's appreciation of the teeming life around him and the occasional gentle poke at the folks who don't appreciate the wonder of it all.

If you have any interest in the natural world I'd commend them to you. Buy all four and watch all four seasons of the year unfold across the country and the page. If you're a wacko greenie you'll probably find them entirely too sublime. But if you're a conservationist, as I am, you'll find them to be just about perfect.

(Try alibris.com. You'll find them there for well under $10 each.)