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| Apollo edition North With the Spring |
For those interested in North American nature studies Edwin Way Teale is an inevitable force to contend with. (Click on post title to link to Wikipedia entry.) He came to my attention via the reference to his Strange Lives of Familiar Insects in Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. Teale has a formidable bibliography to his credit that includes a four volume work, beginning with North With the Spring (1951), that represents the notable accomplishment of crossing the country's cardinal directions over four seasons. In this book and through Autumn Across America (1956), Journey Into Summer (1960) and Wandering Through Winter (1965) he documents an encyclopedia's worth of information about flora, fauna, weather, human impact, etc. with his nascent ecological sensibilities.
These works, which have come to be known as The American Seasons, appeal to me for their contributions to ecological science, their literary merits - down to earth reporting and just plain good stories if you like things like eagle's nests and the world's deepest spring, a couple hundred foot hole in the ground that turns into a river at your feet - but also because the undertaking involved a many, many thousands of miles road trip around the land. Sure beats hawking widgets or trying to assuage clients whose life savings is down the drain. Doesn't it?
These works, which have come to be known as The American Seasons, appeal to me for their contributions to ecological science, their literary merits - down to earth reporting and just plain good stories if you like things like eagle's nests and the world's deepest spring, a couple hundred foot hole in the ground that turns into a river at your feet - but also because the undertaking involved a many, many thousands of miles road trip around the land. Sure beats hawking widgets or trying to assuage clients whose life savings is down the drain. Doesn't it?
In the mid-1960's Apollo Editions published trade paperbacks of the quartet with gorgeous illustrated covers that rework a collage motif in four different color schemes. These attractive covers are difficult to locate on the internet. I've only seen them listed individually on book sale sites, usually without images and I've yet to see the the whole group pictured anywhere hence sharing pics of my copies here and in the companion post.
