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American Seasons #2
Journey into Summer: A Naturalist's Record of a 19,000-Mile Journey through the North American Summer
The author describes his experiences traveling from the Franconia Notch in New Hampshire to Pike's Peak, Colorado, and shares his observations of nature along the way.
366 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
21 people are currently reading
315 people want to read
About the author
Edwin Way Teale
55 books55 followersEdwin Way Teale was an American naturalist, photographer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Teale's works serve as primary source material documenting environmental conditions across North America from 1930 - 1980. He is perhaps best known for his series The American Seasons, four books documenting over 75,000 miles (121,000 km) of automobile travel across North America following the changing seasons.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 7, 2021
This was the last I had to read in the seasonal books written by Edwin Way Teale as he and his wife Nellie traveled around the U.S. during the entirety of a season. This was their summer trip, and as with all the others there were so many out-of-the-way places that they visited, finding incredible beauty or fantastic stories hidden in nature. I learned so much from each of these books, and as with all the others, I kept a notebook and pen handy. After making all 4 of these seasonal journeys with the Teales, I feel like they are friends! I think they were people whom it would have been wonderful to know and spend time talking with. They had such a love for the natural world, and such wonder at all they saw and explored.
June 23, 2025
I discovered Edwin Way Teale's A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm on the shelves of the Howland Library in Beacon, N.Y. when I was a teenager. Published in 1974, it was one of his later books. He began publishing books in 1930 and continued to do so for five decades. Journey Into Summer is part of a four-volume set that explores each season via car trips across the United States with his wife Nellie.
Oddly enough, they were not written in seasonal order. Northward With the Spring appeared in 1951, although the actual journey it chronicles took place immediately after World War II. Their only son, David, was killed in the war, and the Teales drove 17,000 miles partly as a form of grief therapy. Autumn Across America followed five years later, Journey Into Summer in 1960, and Wandering Through Winter five years after that. Perhaps in recognition of the entire project, Teale was awarded a Pulitizer Prize for the final volume, the first given to a volume of nature writing.
Teale's "Seasons" books are popular versions of the science of phenology, the "the specific science which has the goal to know the 'manifestation of life ruled by the time,'" as Belgian scientist Charles Morren, who coined the term, put it in 1849. Gilbert White, in his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), carefully documents the dates of occurrence for natural events in a single place over several years. The journals of Henry David Thoreau were used to produce four books on the seasons between 1881 and 1892.
These were undoubtedly models for Teale's books, but one of his contributions is to take advantage of the then-new modern road system to drive between 17,000 and 20,000 miles in three months to record natural events that document the progression of a particular season across the United States. Journey Into Summer begins 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 skirt the northern edge of New York and spend a great deal of time in the Great Lakes region and then move on, winding north to south through the Great Plains before spending the final few weeks in Colorado, going up and down the mountains through five of C. Hart Merriam's six altitudinal life zones.
The resulting narrative is a mixture of natural history observations, personal encounters with naturalist friends and colleagues who play host along the way, philosophical musings, and an army of facts that Teale obviously added at his desk during the writing of the manuscript. Reading this book 60 years after it was issued, I couldn't help thinking that today he could have marshaled all this information at a roadside café with a wifi connection rather than waiting until he got home.
Teale will not be for everybody, I suppose. He doesn't write about gear or benchmarks, so those who read natural history for passages about which lens had to be used to get a sharp image of a duck or how arduous it was to climb that 14,000-foot mountain will be disappointed. Others who want politics with their natural history will come away wanting as well. Teale occasionally becomes stern when he is describing the despoilation of a particular place and he can be elegiac about a species that once graced the landscape and is now gone, but he is not one to whinge on at length about the evils of real estate development or strip mining. This is not to say that he ignores the existence of these phenomena, but they remain at the periphery of his narrative, which instead focuses on the beauty of the complexity and diversity of what he and Nellie are witnessing.
While Journey Into Summer includes personal passages, Teale does not wade into his feelings very deeply. At one point in this trip they stop in Wichita, Kansas, where he and Nellie taught at a Friends school 30 years earlier. He finds the town itself so utterly transformed as to be nearly unrecognizable and spends time along the Arkansas River in order to get his bearings. Along the water he notes how all the sand bars have moved around (and aren't made of the same sand) and the the cut banks have shifted downstream, but the river is still more familiar looking than the town.
Teale is not above wry humor either. In Campbellport, Wisconsin, he and his wife find lunch in an old hotel where the waitress solemnly informs them that Mr. Bauer is dead. As it turns out people once came from miles around to meet Mr. Bauer, the 600-pound bartender who owned the hotel. He had recently passed away at the age of 46 after a long illness and the town was still in mourning. This kind of quirkiness keeps the reader on their toes and reminds you that although the Teales seem pretty square and this is the 1950s, they are open-minded, kind, and perhaps a little lonely. Each of the Seasons books is dedicated to their lost 19-year-old son and in a way they are haunted by his absence.
Even in the 1950s and '60s, when Teale was composing these phenological narratives, he was including evidence of shifting dates for natural events, and they were almost all in the direction that indicated warming from the past to the then-present. While there have indeed been decadal cycles through the 20th century—the '40s and '60s were colder, the '30s and '50s were warmer—the inexorable long-term trend has been toward warming. In that light, it would be an interesting exercise to repeat at least one of these journeys through a season in order to visit the same places on the same dates to see what is blooming, what insects have emerged, or what animals are further along in their breeding season, compared to when Edwin and Nellie Teale such a marvelously detailed and readable record of what they saw 60 years ago.
Oddly enough, they were not written in seasonal order. Northward With the Spring appeared in 1951, although the actual journey it chronicles took place immediately after World War II. Their only son, David, was killed in the war, and the Teales drove 17,000 miles partly as a form of grief therapy. Autumn Across America followed five years later, Journey Into Summer in 1960, and Wandering Through Winter five years after that. Perhaps in recognition of the entire project, Teale was awarded a Pulitizer Prize for the final volume, the first given to a volume of nature writing.
Teale's "Seasons" books are popular versions of the science of phenology, the "the specific science which has the goal to know the 'manifestation of life ruled by the time,'" as Belgian scientist Charles Morren, who coined the term, put it in 1849. Gilbert White, in his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), carefully documents the dates of occurrence for natural events in a single place over several years. The journals of Henry David Thoreau were used to produce four books on the seasons between 1881 and 1892.
These were undoubtedly models for Teale's books, but one of his contributions is to take advantage of the then-new modern road system to drive between 17,000 and 20,000 miles in three months to record natural events that document the progression of a particular season across the United States. Journey Into Summer begins 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 skirt the northern edge of New York and spend a great deal of time in the Great Lakes region and then move on, winding north to south through the Great Plains before spending the final few weeks in Colorado, going up and down the mountains through five of C. Hart Merriam's six altitudinal life zones.
The resulting narrative is a mixture of natural history observations, personal encounters with naturalist friends and colleagues who play host along the way, philosophical musings, and an army of facts that Teale obviously added at his desk during the writing of the manuscript. Reading this book 60 years after it was issued, I couldn't help thinking that today he could have marshaled all this information at a roadside café with a wifi connection rather than waiting until he got home.
Teale will not be for everybody, I suppose. He doesn't write about gear or benchmarks, so those who read natural history for passages about which lens had to be used to get a sharp image of a duck or how arduous it was to climb that 14,000-foot mountain will be disappointed. Others who want politics with their natural history will come away wanting as well. Teale occasionally becomes stern when he is describing the despoilation of a particular place and he can be elegiac about a species that once graced the landscape and is now gone, but he is not one to whinge on at length about the evils of real estate development or strip mining. This is not to say that he ignores the existence of these phenomena, but they remain at the periphery of his narrative, which instead focuses on the beauty of the complexity and diversity of what he and Nellie are witnessing.
While Journey Into Summer includes personal passages, Teale does not wade into his feelings very deeply. At one point in this trip they stop in Wichita, Kansas, where he and Nellie taught at a Friends school 30 years earlier. He finds the town itself so utterly transformed as to be nearly unrecognizable and spends time along the Arkansas River in order to get his bearings. Along the water he notes how all the sand bars have moved around (and aren't made of the same sand) and the the cut banks have shifted downstream, but the river is still more familiar looking than the town.
Teale is not above wry humor either. In Campbellport, Wisconsin, he and his wife find lunch in an old hotel where the waitress solemnly informs them that Mr. Bauer is dead. As it turns out people once came from miles around to meet Mr. Bauer, the 600-pound bartender who owned the hotel. He had recently passed away at the age of 46 after a long illness and the town was still in mourning. This kind of quirkiness keeps the reader on their toes and reminds you that although the Teales seem pretty square and this is the 1950s, they are open-minded, kind, and perhaps a little lonely. Each of the Seasons books is dedicated to their lost 19-year-old son and in a way they are haunted by his absence.
Even in the 1950s and '60s, when Teale was composing these phenological narratives, he was including evidence of shifting dates for natural events, and they were almost all in the direction that indicated warming from the past to the then-present. While there have indeed been decadal cycles through the 20th century—the '40s and '60s were colder, the '30s and '50s were warmer—the inexorable long-term trend has been toward warming. In that light, it would be an interesting exercise to repeat at least one of these journeys through a season in order to visit the same places on the same dates to see what is blooming, what insects have emerged, or what animals are further along in their breeding season, compared to when Edwin and Nellie Teale such a marvelously detailed and readable record of what they saw 60 years ago.
February 14, 2017
This is my new favorite Teale. Maybe because I am reading a book about summer in the winter or maybe because of the way he writes or maybe because his and Nellie's journeys took place about the same time my grandparents were taking cross country vacations ...but this was perfect bed time reading. A true naturalist he didn't just write about birds or plants. He told of people he visited along the way and about the history of others. His books are probably out of print...again but it's worth tracking them down.
December 30, 2016
This is the true story of a couple (meaning two, but also meaning married) who, in the late 1950s, take off on a road trip in their car on the first day of summer with no plan but to spend the season observing nature across the U.S.A. It's not quiet a road trip story, although there are some mentions of where they stayed and what they ate and the people they met. Mostly, this book holds stories of birds and bug and stars. There are stories of plants (particularly of trees) and animals (prairie dogs!) and bodies of water (rivers and lakes). Some parts of the book were really interesting to me (lightning bugs and the Persied meteor shower and the sand dunes in Colorado), but other parts (mayflies) made me drowsy much the way a hot summer day does.
If money were no object (as it seemed not to be for the author and his wife), I'd take this same road trip and see what's changed.
If money were no object (as it seemed not to be for the author and his wife), I'd take this same road trip and see what's changed.
July 27, 2017
Beautifully written, it makes you want to go for a hike in a wildflower meadow. The book was published in 1960, and Teale keeps his focus squarely on the landscape and its flora and fauna. I admit I was hoping to read some descriptions of the cultural life of America at that time, but you can’t blame him for sticking to his intended topic. Some of the scenes he describes are achingly beautiful, like a night sky alive with swirling fireflies, but he also provides moving descriptions of great slaughters at the hand of man: not just the buffalo and the passenger pigeon, but also life-filled wetlands drained in the name of progress, and enormous prairie dog towns destroyed in the name of misguided science. The past sixty years have not been kind to the environment, and I wonder how many of the beautiful places he passed through have been paved over and covered with mini-malls.
September 27, 2021
Edwin Way Teale is an extraordinary nature writer. His work reflects the philosophy of Thoreau about the value of nature. He is a detailed observer that writes with an obvious sense of true wonder. In Journey Into Summer, he continues the journey he began in "North With the Spring" and "Autumn Across America" by exploring the natural history of the United States during the summer months. This, and his other three seasons books are magical. Highly recommended, and great for reading in the long grass and listening to the birds sing!
March 10, 2014
So beautiful. My favorite parts were the meteor shower and the Alpine tundra at the end. Their lingering on Pike's Peak when everyone else had left and all their other times of lingering and observing has made me want to take more time in my life to enjoy the beauty around me. Their lack of hurry, their spending days getting to know the tundra and the other places they visited is so refreshing.
September 29, 2018
Summer met 40 years after a walk into spring
Fourty years or so ago, the gentle and profound perceptions of edwin way teale changed the way I looked at the world. I wish I could thank him personally for that insight. Since that is not possible, I would encourage you to make the journey yourself, by way of thanks. I think you'll be as moved as I was. Start walking into spring, but don't wait 40 years to continue the journey.
Fourty years or so ago, the gentle and profound perceptions of edwin way teale changed the way I looked at the world. I wish I could thank him personally for that insight. Since that is not possible, I would encourage you to make the journey yourself, by way of thanks. I think you'll be as moved as I was. Start walking into spring, but don't wait 40 years to continue the journey.
June 8, 2008
For the account of the incredible swarming of mayflies in Michigan, and why he did not crush one of the adults who blundered into his path; paraphrasing, "Better the smallest moment of life-awareness than the epoch-long unconsciousness of the stone."
August 17, 2020
A beautiful book marrying natural history and geography in a unique, interesting, and entertaining way. I borrowed it from the library but I think I’ll have to get my own copy for homeschooling. Edwin Way Teale makes me want to pack up the car and take my own three month journey across the US.
November 30, 2024
I am now fully through this monumental series recounting Teale’s journeys across the seasons of America.
Teale has become one of my favorite writers. There are wonders all around us. We just need to look.
Teale has become one of my favorite writers. There are wonders all around us. We just need to look.
July 21, 2025
'Journey into Summer' was a random find for me, I think at a Goodwill. Never heard of it but I decided on the first day of Summer 2025 to embark on my first Odyssey across America with the Teales in that summer of 1957. And what a wondrous trip it was! 19,000 miles and three months on roads across this land starting on the Summer Solstice at Franconia Notch, NH and ending at Pike's Peak, CO. Via the northern route along Great Lakes, into the Dakotas, then down through the Missouri basin into TX and OK and finally Colorado by the Fall equinox. Astoundingly, in the entire 13 weeks or there is not one word about politics, news or celebrities (other than various scientists and naturalists). It could be they never listened to the car radio once in that entire trip, but he certainly never commented on it. Hurricane Audrey slammed into the Louisiana coast a week into summer 1957 killing over 400 people, but nada. You could almost forget about a thing called politics! Moreover, the Teales seemed to have had not one disagreement about, well anything. When I think about my life and how a drive across town can cause a dispute in some degree, well I am more than amazed (and a bit jealous!). Of course who knows, perhaps it was just a decision to maintain the focus of the book--the natural world in America and man's place in it.
The trip is not all wine and roses, it was a time when the environmental movement was in it's infancy (Silent Spring was published in 1962), but Teale is not indifferent to the increasing toll of man on the other living things. He laments environmental destruction and human greed repeatedly but it does not become tendentious or shrill, just sadly noted. The demise of the passenger pigeons or the bison are two of the more dramatic examples. But not a single mention of climate change! A similar book today might have 100 references and statements of impending doom on the subject. Geology, weather, hydrology, astronomy and myriad flora and fauna are touched on in varying degrees. Although Teale was not a scientist, he pulls in sufficient experts (including the good old U.S. Weather Bureau!) and pioneers in various fields to keep it both educational and readable. A few Google checks of random references revealed that he indeed did his homework, which was a lot harder back then! I learned so much about this country and the beautiful natural places within--some seemingly familiar (Niagara Falls, Pikes Peak, the Great Lakes) but many I'd never heard of and might wish to encounter--the Long Trail in Vermont, Seney National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan, the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado and others. But mainly he teaches the value of patience and taking time to actually look at nature.
This was apparently the third trip of the four the Teales took, one covering each season--the first being 'North With the Spring' in the 1940s. It was written after the war in which their 19-yr. old son David was killed (each book is dedicated to him--painful but poignant). Teale was awarded the Pulitizer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1966 for 'Wandering Through Winter'. I cannot but believe that it was well deserved, although the volume still awaits me. I plan to start 'Autumn Across America' (1956) on September 22, 2025. Maybe around 2:19 in the afternoon!
The trip is not all wine and roses, it was a time when the environmental movement was in it's infancy (Silent Spring was published in 1962), but Teale is not indifferent to the increasing toll of man on the other living things. He laments environmental destruction and human greed repeatedly but it does not become tendentious or shrill, just sadly noted. The demise of the passenger pigeons or the bison are two of the more dramatic examples. But not a single mention of climate change! A similar book today might have 100 references and statements of impending doom on the subject. Geology, weather, hydrology, astronomy and myriad flora and fauna are touched on in varying degrees. Although Teale was not a scientist, he pulls in sufficient experts (including the good old U.S. Weather Bureau!) and pioneers in various fields to keep it both educational and readable. A few Google checks of random references revealed that he indeed did his homework, which was a lot harder back then! I learned so much about this country and the beautiful natural places within--some seemingly familiar (Niagara Falls, Pikes Peak, the Great Lakes) but many I'd never heard of and might wish to encounter--the Long Trail in Vermont, Seney National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan, the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado and others. But mainly he teaches the value of patience and taking time to actually look at nature.
This was apparently the third trip of the four the Teales took, one covering each season--the first being 'North With the Spring' in the 1940s. It was written after the war in which their 19-yr. old son David was killed (each book is dedicated to him--painful but poignant). Teale was awarded the Pulitizer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1966 for 'Wandering Through Winter'. I cannot but believe that it was well deserved, although the volume still awaits me. I plan to start 'Autumn Across America' (1956) on September 22, 2025. Maybe around 2:19 in the afternoon!
January 22, 2024
Great nature travel! It's very old--published in 1972--but I am just now reading it. And it's still just as gorgeous and poetic and exciting today as it would have been so many years ago. He writes of plants and insects and animals, weather and scenery to knock your socks off. In particular there's a time when they drove through firefly heaven--winged lanterns--and another time when they stayed up all night to watch a meteor shower. His descriptions were so vivid that I can't imagine why I've never done that.
One odd note--in the time of his journey, the 1970s, he made many notes of the scarcity of bald eagles and osprey. He lamented their absence and often made comments on the empty nests left bare as a symbol of vanishing wild. If only he were alive today--what a rejoicing he would have at the return of these majestic birds!
He died in 1980, no doubt before the knowledge became common that DDT had been the agent of the birds' decline. He had some theory about why they were scarce--sorry I forgot what it was. But he was happily wrong about that.
One odd note--in the time of his journey, the 1970s, he made many notes of the scarcity of bald eagles and osprey. He lamented their absence and often made comments on the empty nests left bare as a symbol of vanishing wild. If only he were alive today--what a rejoicing he would have at the return of these majestic birds!
He died in 1980, no doubt before the knowledge became common that DDT had been the agent of the birds' decline. He had some theory about why they were scarce--sorry I forgot what it was. But he was happily wrong about that.
September 27, 2023
This was my perfect read! Combine traveling in one particular season, with a poet/naturalist who has a thorough knowledge of all living creatures and plants, and you have yourself a winner in my book! This was so enjoyable to read, especially since I have seen many of the items discussed in the book, but never viewed the geography like Teale does. So this makes for a more intimate look at those surroundings and for a greater appreciation of all natural life and the planet we call Earth. Thank you Mr. Teale and I am off to read the other three "Seasons" now!!!
January 26, 2025
A very enjoyable introduction to Edwin Way Teale's canon. I now plan to read all four of the "seasonal" narratives. Because these trips were made before the creation of the interstate highway network and before the United States became so populous, the author's relatively slow rural peregrinations are all the more valuable and worth savoring. I especially appreciated that he and his traveling companion, his wife Nellie, were so willing to spend time outdoors after dark and to share their experiences with their readers.
September 28, 2021
There are very few books that I reread and own. Edwin Way Teale's books reveal something new each time I read them.
April 3, 2023
Wonderful
Read
December 3, 2023Second of the American Seasons natural history series, whose 4th book finishing the series received a Pulitzer Prize.
August 17, 2025
I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to assigning the 4 part series to my highschool students.
March 29, 2024
What an interesting way to learn about some of the natural wonders, geography, and history of the United States. Teale's style is very readable, and he doesn't take himself too seriously. Because this was written over 50 years ago, there is the added interest to the reader of today in reading descriptions of places and issues that today are now completely changed. For example, eagles and prairie dogs are no longer on the verge of extinction, and places where he describes miles and miles of vineyards and orchards are now swallowed up by urban sprawl.
September 15, 2016
Edwin Way Teale was an naturalist who wrote 4 classic books, one based on each season that describe travels around America in the 1950s. His books are based on descriptions of the nature he encountered, and read much like a more modern version of John Muir, maybe John Muir by car. Ofd course now, 60+ years on, even Teale's books are a bit dated, but they still read well and it is little wonder Teale was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his writing. I spent much of this summer reading Teale's Journey Into Summer, and I am glad I did. His writing is good enough that you can picture the scenes he describes, and along the way, you learn a little history, a little science, a little ecology. I concluded reading Journey Into Spring in mid September, and plan to order a copy of Autumn Across America, the next season's trip in his 4 volume set.
It is a shame Teale's writing is not better remembered and more read today. I came across Journey Into Summer at a public library used book sale, and the book sat on my shelf for a year before I opened it because I had never heard of him before. This would be a good book to add to any high school or college student's reading and will be enjoyed by anyone who loves time outside and nature.
A word on the wonderful "Apollo Edition" paperback copy of Journey Into Summer that I purchased: despite being over 60 years old, the paperback remains in wonderful condition with clean paper and a solid binding. I hope to find the other 3 books of the series in the "Apollo Edition" also!
It is a shame Teale's writing is not better remembered and more read today. I came across Journey Into Summer at a public library used book sale, and the book sat on my shelf for a year before I opened it because I had never heard of him before. This would be a good book to add to any high school or college student's reading and will be enjoyed by anyone who loves time outside and nature.
A word on the wonderful "Apollo Edition" paperback copy of Journey Into Summer that I purchased: despite being over 60 years old, the paperback remains in wonderful condition with clean paper and a solid binding. I hope to find the other 3 books of the series in the "Apollo Edition" also!
March 29, 2015
Wonderful, in the literal meaning of the word. Teale finds marvel upon marvel in parts of the world now known derisively as "fly over country." For my part, I marveled at Teale's effortless ability to summon a host of witnesses, from Flaubert to Pepys, as he ponders the natural world. "Journey Into Summer" is a small masterpiece as travel writing, as nature writing, and and as a thoughtful consideration of environmental concerns (circa 1960). My paperback edition includes an introduction by Ann Zwinger. I strongly advise skipping this little screed wherein it is argued that Teale is not one of them tree huggers.
November 18, 2016
I read this 1960 classic for my bird club book club. Teale is a wonderful writer, and I learned new things about all kinds of natural phenomena. The entire book club enjoyed it and had nothing but praise for his writing and knowledge base. Included was a marvelous map of all the places he and his wife Nellie stopped as they made their way through the U.S. in search of summers miracles.
July 6, 2015
This book contains in-depth information about the natural history along the driving route taken by the author and his wife.
February 3, 2023
对美景悠然神往的时候，才是我们真正生活的时候，我们能在这许多东西中逗留得长久一点，才算不虚此生。
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