A Great American Naturalist: Edwin Way Teale
Contributed By Doug Ferguson
In this series of stories about Great Americans that have not only influenced me in the past, but also many others as a result of their life’s work, two of these have been naturalists. For my last and final Great American in this series, I want to add one more, Edwin Way Teale.
In the early 1970’s in Upstate New York, after buying a 30 acre remnant of what was originally a 200 acre century old family dairy farm, I found I was looking for reading material related to growing and nature rather than fiction for relaxation! Shortly afterward a book came into my possession, “North With The Spring: A Naturalist's Record of a 17,000 Mile Journey with the North American Spring” first published in 1951, that started my adventures with author Edwin Way Teale.
In this book naturalist and photographer Teale and his wife Nellie embarked on a 17,000 mile quest to “chase” the spring on the North American continent starting at the tip of Florida recording and photographing nature’s wonders during spring as they observed them on their way north through all the eastern states to the tip of Maine.
His descriptive, yet down to earth style as he described these spring events and their historic roots, helped me appreciate the nature that existed on my own farm, and encouraged me to seek more of his writings.
Over the next twenty years the couple made three more such trips around the United States during the summer, fall and winter seasons traveling over 100,000 miles to write and publish three more books.
First “Autumn Across America (1956)”, covered a northern journey from Cape Cod on the Atlantic coast to Point Reyes on the Pacific, visiting sites from the Great Lake region to Louis & Clark territory on their way to the west coast to chase significant fall events.
Next was “Journey Into Summer (1960)”, that began in Franconia Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, in the same spot he and his wife ended their spring journey 10 years earlier. From there they skirted the northern edge of New York and spent a great deal of time in the Great Lakes region and then moved on winding north to south through the Great Plains before spending the final few weeks in Colorado.
Finally “Wandering Through Winter (1965)” which reversed direction and began this journey on the coast of Southern California, and finished on the northernmost coast of Maine, traveling mostly a southern route until they reach Washington, D.C. where they traveled up the Eastern Seaboard and finished on the coast of Maine.
In all his writing he had a gift for keeping the reader fascinated. For instance his account of their June trip to Kelleys Island in Lake Erie just north of Sandusky, Ohio in time to see the remarkable spectacle of one of the world’s most dense hatching of Mayflies in “Journey Into Summer” in the chapter “Mayfly Island” stands in my mind as one of the most vivid descriptions of huge clouds of millions of insects I have ever read!
Together these four books written almost seven decades ago, cover and document nature’s seasonal changes over much of the United States. Filled with Teale’s poetic and yet accurate descriptions of natural seasonal phenomena in each area with his skillful photographs, they have become classics in the lexicon of nature and conservation literature. They also have provided a wide range of snapshots of natural environments across the United States back in the 1950’s and 1960’s that can be compared with those places today to see how the effects of man’s development over the years since have had on local wildlife.
Over his lifetime he wrote over 30 books and wrote many articles. Among the many honors he received over his prolific writing career, in 1966 he became the first naturalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for “Wandering Through Winter''. In 1978, his last work, “A Walk through the Year” summarized a year with his wife Nellie at their Trail Wood farm, highlighting the memorable experiences they shared. On October 18, 1980, Teale died of prostate cancer at the age of 81.
“Trail Wood” in Connecticut where he and Nellie spent their final years was named the Edwin Way Teale Memorial Sanctuary in 1981 and became the steward of the Connecticut Audubon Society. Nellie lived there until her death in 1993.
To me, besides expressing the wonder of nature, he was a champion of conservation in his writings, keeping a balance between promoting a healthy “wild” world, but also a healthy one for man.
Unlike some of his counterparts, he never became political even though I didn’t agree with some of his causes toward the end of his career. However, his artful and heartfelt way of expressing the wonder of the natural world spoke for itself. You don’t have to have everyone agree with everything you say or do to still be a great writer and a Great American!