Edwin Way Teale - Wandering Through Winter

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Dedicated to

DAVID

Who Traveled with

Us in Our Hearts

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ON a summer day, more than twenty years ago, I set down on a sheet of yellow paper a plan for following the spring north, keeping pace with its fifteen-mile-a-day progress up the map from lower Florida to Canada. Four years went by before, in 1947, this dreamed-of journey could be realized and another four years passed before the book, North With the Spring, appeared in 1951. The following year, 1952, we crossed the continent through autumn; in 1957 we journeyed into summer; during the winter of 1961-1962 we traveled from coast to coast through the fourth and final season.

Autumn Across America was issued in 1956, Journey into Summer in i960, and now, in 1965, more than two decades after this survey of the natural history of the American seasons began, I bring it to a close with the publication of Wandering Through Winter.

During this time, including return trips to portions of our routes for checking facts or obtaining additional information, we have traveled well over 100,000 miles by automobile, airplane, ferry, mudboat, snow Weasel, scout car, Jeep, cog railway, canoe, on foot and on snowshoes. Counting our return from California at the end of the autumn trip, when we followed the same general route east, the total distance traveled through winter exceeds 35,000 miles.

Everywhere we went during this adventure with a season we accumulated a debt of gratitude to those who, from coast

to coast, assisted us in innumerable ways. For such help I am

under obligation to:

Mrs. I. D. Acord, Dean Amadon, Charles M. Bogert, Sharon Brown, John Bull, William Bullard, Lee and Ida Cantwell, Ralph Chapman, Mrs. Kennedy N. Clapp, Howard P. Clemens, Roland Clement, Clarence Cottam, John Cronan, Allan and Helen Cruickshank, Marvin Davis, Wendell and Alison Davis, Henry Duquette, Loren Eiseley, William Fitzgerald, Robert Garrett, Raymond M. Gilmore, Stanislaw Gula, Connie Hagar, Walter Harding, Mrs. Everett Harlow, William Harrison, Merton E. Hinshaw, Gregory Hitchcock, Homer Hoffman, Edmund C. Jaeger, Pauline James, Riley and Bonnie Kaufman, Don Greame Kelley, John and Margaret Kieran, Edgar Kincaid, Alexander B. Klots, Joseph Wood Krutch, Richard and Ruth Launer, George W. Leetch, Ruth Lengel-sen, Tilford McAllister, Rowland R. McElvare, Sibyl Means, Howard A. Millar, Henry Scott Miller, Mike Milonski, Charles E. Mohr, Ann Haven Morgan, Henry Mullins, John Murphree, Philip B. Myers, James Neal, Josephine Newman, J. d'Arcy Northwood, Harry C. Oberholser, Leslie and Doro-tha Peltier, Richard H. Pough, Roger Tory Peterson, James Pickering, George Ranney, Harold W. Rickett, Herbert Ruckes, C. Bertrand Schultz, Harry and Ann Sopp, Hal Sorter, Edson and Isabel Stocking, Warren Stone, Edwin Sutton, George Miksch Sutton, Thomas Tippit, Hobart Van Deusen, John Wanamaker, Farida A. Wiley, Warren Wins-low.

I am especially indebted to William Fitzgerald, Edmund C. Jaeger, J. d'Arcy Northwood and Leslie Peltier for reading chapters in manuscript form and to Harry Sopp for his help in arranging our Weasel ride to the deer yard in Maine. Benjamin T. Richards, who showed us the Great Smokies in the spring, has again, as in previous volumes, been of invaluable assistance in copy-editing the manuscript and reading galleys and page-proofs.

Portions of Chapter Twenty originally appeared in The Atlantic. Prior to book publication, Chapter Fifteen and Chapter Twenty-Four appeared in Audubon Magazine and Chapter Four in Natural History. To the editors of these publications I wish to express my thanks for permission to include the material in the present volume.

Nellie, my wife, not only accompanied me on the trip but accompanied me in re-living the journey while writing the book, reacting the chapters a number of times as they evolved from the mass of fieldnotes and reminiscences. In both these journeys her help has been inestimable.

For more than a quarter of a century, as book has followed book, I have been well aware of my indebtedness to members of the Dodd, Mead staff for their valued contributions to editing and publishing the successive volumes. My grateful acknowledgment is particularly due to Edward H. Dodd, Jr., Raymond T. Bond, S. Phelps Piatt, Jr., John Blair, Helen M. Winfield and Mary McPartland.

Trail Wood May 1, 1965 Edwin Way Teale

FOLLOWING PAGE 106

Split Mountain

Eucalyptus trees

Canyon rock where poorwill hibernated

The Devil's Cornfield

Mule deer

Tapestry of frost

The saguaro forest

Saguaro producing new branches

A many-branched saguaro

Cross-section of saguaro revealed by broken trunk

Rods forming framework of saguaro

Wave of gypsum sand in white dunes

Nellie identifying plant in the dunes

Column of gypsum under desert sumac

The gypsum dunes at White Sands

Wind ripples around a yucca

Ocotillo clumps in the desert

Cholla cactus at sunset

Casa Grande in the Big Bend

Mountain slope in the Big Bend

Green jays

The chachalaca

White pelican

Connie Hagar and Patch

Sibyl Means and Zeke

FOLLOWING PAGE 330

The circling stars Teasels after ice storm

The ice serpent

Long-tailed salamander

Hiding place of grouse in snowdrift

Ice cataract in the Adirondacks

The white forest

Chickadee on birch stub

Snow-covered trees after blizzard

Tree sparrow tracks in snow

Crow tracks in snow

Quail tracks in snow

Ruffed grouse tracks in snow

Opossum tracks in snow

Gray squirrel tracks in soft snow