Donald Culross Peattie (1898 - 1964)

 

  Mr. Peattie is an interesting fellow and if you are the type of person who enjoys books about nature, and writing that is a bit philosophical and poetic, then you should give him a try. Rather than rely on me and suffer through whatever I am about to write, go directly to the Wikipedia entry, where you will find a list of his books and from it you can determine if you want to carry on. 

  
  He wrote a lot and was quite popular, so used copies of his books are easy to get and if you have access to Western University libraries, you will find about ten. I have sometimes written about university presses and one of them, Trinity University Press, has chosen to reprint nine of his works. Four are pictured above. This Trinity University Press, by the way, is in San Antonio, Texas. One of the books shown is, A Book of Hours, which has 24 essays, one for each hour. Another not shone, An Almanac for Moderns, has a short essay for every day of the year.  I have not read them, but I have a copy of A Natural History of North American Trees.

  The Trinity edition is a paperback consolidation of his two volume work:  A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America (1950) and A Natural History of Western Trees (1953). You will enjoy it if you like a sentence like this: ''Where the deer bound, where the trout rise, where your horse stops to slather a drink from icy water while the sun is warm on the back of your neck, where every breath you draw is exhilaration -- that is where the aspens grow."

   If you do bother now to look at the Wikipedia entry, you may be put off by the brief statement that suggests that Peattie may have written some sentences which could now be considered regressive, in terms of race. It does note, however, that they "were mercifully brief and hardly malicious." I think it highly likely that Peattie was a good man and as proof, here is what his son has to say in the Foreword to The Natural History of Trees:

"Before I leave you to scroll among these leafy pages, I should make some last observations about my father, Donald Culross Peattie, renowned naturalist and acclaimed writer. He worked as hard as any man I know; he was a devoted husband to his life's soul mate, and a caring and thoughtful parent to all his children. But the quality that stands out above all others was his serenity in the face of trouble and the chaos of an unruly planet. The trivia, the selfishness, and the vulgar noise that fills much of our world never shook him, fixed as he was on listening to "the roar of a mountain river, and a higher frailer sound above the churning water, the singing of a forest in the night wind."

Sources: 
  To get his 'new' books: Trinity University Press. 
   If you are interested in the natural history of the Great Lakes area, Peattie wrote: Flora of the Indiana Dunes, a Handbook of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Lake Michigan Coast of Indiana and of the Calumet District. There is a copy in the Western Libraries, probably because a former president of the university Sherwood Fox, was a naturalist as well as a classicist. Earlier I recommended reading Edwin Way Teale and he also wrote about the Indiana Dunes. Those subjects are covered here: Edwin Way Teale and here: Parks Along the Great Lakes.

The Bonus:

  Peattie and his wife spent a few years living in Europe and he also wrote a history of the village in which they lived: Vence: The Story of a Provincial Town, which was also reprinted as Vence-Immortal Village. (I am a careless reader and thought it was 'Venice'.) Western Libraries have a couple of copies. BUT, you can also read it online. I happened to stumble across an American Europhile blogger who now lives in Vence. He decided, for good non-profit reasons to make his copy available and you can read it here: Steve and Carole in Vence: Immortal Village. 

Edwin Way Teale (1899 - 1980)

 Another Pandemic Reading Project

   For those running low on reading material, I last recommended books by George R. Stewart, who wrote about a variety of subjects and produced both works of fiction and non-fiction.  Edwin Way Teale, who, like Stewart, died over forty years ago, wrote mainly non-fiction and his subject was 'nature.' He was a popular author who worked at Popular Science Monthly and wrote articles for magazines like Colliers.  He was the friendly neighbourhood naturalist who often appeared on TV; a kind of Marlin Perkins for insects. At some point he became popular enough to be a freelancer and he and his wife Nellie, hit the road and wrote about everything they saw, including the road kill. 

   Even if you are not interested in nature, you will enjoy the books pictured above, particularly if you are a fan of road books or road trips. I wrote earlier about the American Trails Book Series and the series by Archer Butler Hulbert, Historic Highways of America. The travels of the Teale's are about The American Seasons, as those seasons existed on this continent between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. The last volume in the series, Wandering Through Winter, earned a Pulitzer Prize for Teale in 1966.

   The sub-titles of these books will indicate how unusual they are: North with the Spring: A Naturalist's Record of a 17,000-Mile Journey with the North American Spring (1951); Autumn across America: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Autumn (1956); Journey into Summer: A Naturalist's Record of a 19,000-Mile Journey through the North American Summer (1960) and Wandering through Winter: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Winter (1965.) 

   Even if you failed elementary geography or have forgotten how long a mile is, you probably are aware that it is much less than 17,000 miles from the Everglades to Mount Washington in New Hampshire or less than 20,000 from Monomy on Cape Cod to Point Reyes, California. These were routes not taken by typical 'snow birds' or as the crow flies. The Teales meandered and stayed within each season for the entirety of each trip. Spring travels north at a rate of about fifteen miles per day, as did the Teales who rambled east and west to remain always in the spring as they moved slowly north between February and June. 

   Unfortunately I cannot provide examples from the books to entice you to have a look at them. I borrowed them from the libraries up at Western University and returned them all a while back. Now they are in storage and because of the pandemic, it is not possible to retrieve them. I have already provided one example from North With the Spring. See my post about the "Eagle Man", Charles Broley from Gorrie, Ontario, who the Teales met in Florida. I do recall that they also wrote about Point Pelee and birder readers will appreciate their many observations about the winged wildlife they spot along the way.

   I did also discuss another of Teale's books in my post about Parks Along the Great Lakes. As a young boy, Teale loved to spend the summers at his grandparents who lived near Lake Michigan. From that experience he wrote, Dune Boy. I was able to get a copy of that from the London Public Library system, but it now appears to be missing. For more about his Indiana days, see the links provided below. 

   A while back, the Guardian asked some famous authors what books they would choose to give their younger selves. Here is part of Julian Barne's answer: Also, books about the true nature of Nature. I was a blind townee for half my life before slowly discovering the countryside. So I would instruct my younger self to learn about soil, wind and water; trees, animals, plants and birds. And bees. That’s another thing: I’d also give my younger self some truthful books about sex. (Dec. 2, 2017.)

   If you have children or grandchildren, Teale has a lot of books you could purchase for them. Western has a surprising number of them, because, up until quite recently, there was an Education Library which had a fine collection from which aspiring teachers could choose good "Kiddie Lit", as could the students at what used to be called the "School of Library Science."

Re-Tracing the Trips

   Given the detailed observations made by the Teales, I wondered what one would find now. Someone else thought the same thing. John Harris followed the Teale's springtime route and wrote: Returning North With the Spring. Unfortunately, a copy is not available locally. Here is a description from the University of Florida Press:

Retracing Teale's route, writer John Harris reveals a vastly changed natural world. In Returning North with the Spring, he stops at the very places where Teale once stood, paddling through Everglades National Park, the Okefenokee wildlife refuge, the Great Dismal Swamp, and trekking across the Great Smoky Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and Cape Cod. He is stunned to see how climate change, invasive species, and other factors have affected the landscapes and wildlife in the years since Teale saw them.

Yet Harris also discovers that many of the vulnerable sites Teale described have been newly "rewilded" or permanently protected by the government. He looks at current restoration projects, models of sustainable residential development, efforts to control invasive species, and environmental success stories such as the alligator, the bald eagle, and the black bear. Along the way, he meets an array of ecologists, naturalists, and beloved authors who join in his adventure by sharing their memories and experiences of the natural environment in Eastern North America.

   A birder also had the same idea. See this post from the website of the American Bird Conservancy. Bruce Beehler tracked migrant songbirds from their landfall on the Gulf of Mexico, north through the Mississippi Valley, and into the Great North Woods of Ontario, where many of the birds settle down to breed in those raw boreal forests with the ever-so-long days of the summer solstice.

   The Teale's donated their farm to the Audubon Society and additional information is found at the website of the Connecticut Audubon Society. See the links for "The Story of Trail Wood," and "The Teales's Legacy. Nellie Teale lived there until she died in 1993. 

   The state of Indiana also provides considerable material about Teale's time among the dunes of Lake Michigan. See: "Edwin Way Teale: Traveler in Little Realms" and this 28 page research summary. 

Teale Books:

Bolded titles are available in the libraries at Western University in 2021. For a proper list, check the catalogue or consult with a Western librarian.

The Book of Gliders (New York: Dutton, 1930).

Grassroot Jungles: A Book of Insects (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1937; London: Putnam, 1938; revised edition, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1944; London: Hale, 1944); republished as Exploring the Insect World (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1953).

The Boys' Book of Insects: Interesting Facts about the Lives and Habits of the Common Insects, Together with Simple Instructions for Collecting, Rearing, and Studying Them (New York: Dutton, 1939); republished as The Junior Book of Insects (New York: Dutton, 1953).

The Boys' Book of Photography (New York: Dutton, 1939).

The Golden Throng: A Book About Bees (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1940; London: Hale, 1942); republished as A Book About Bees (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959).

Byways to Adventure: A Guide to Nature Hobbies (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942).

Near Horizons: The Story of an Insect Garden (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942; London: Hale, 1947).

Dune Boy: The Early Years of a Naturalist (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1943; London: Hale, 1949).

Insect Life (New York: Boy Scouts of America, 1944).

The Lost Woods: Adventures of a Naturalist (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945; London: Hale, 1952).

Days without Time: Adventures of a Naturalist (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1948).

North with the Spring: A Naturalist's Record of a 17,000-Mile Journey with the North American Spring (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1951; London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954).

Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist's Year (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1953).

Insect Friends (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955).

Autumn across America: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Autumn (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956); republished as Autumn Journey: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Autumn (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957).

Journey into Summer: A Naturalist's Record of a 19,000-Mile Journey through the North American Summer (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1960).

The Lost Dog (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961).

The Strange Lives of Familiar Insects (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962).

Wandering through Winter: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Winter (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965).

Springtime in Britain: An 11,000 Mile Journey through the Natural History of Britain from Land's End to John O'Groats (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970); republished as Springtime in Britain: A Journey through the Land (London: Cassell, 1971).

Photographs of American Nature (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972).

A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1974).

A Walk through the Year (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978).

A Conscious Stillness: Two Naturalists on Thoreau's Rivers, by Teale and Ann Zwinger (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).

The Bonus:

In case you missed it, the Teales wandered in the spring in England all the way from Land's End to John O' Groats. (11,000 miles)

Teale also won the John Burrough's prize for Near Horizons: The Story of an Insect Garden.

Northshire Bookstore

   A couple of years ago, we visited Saratoga Springs. If you want to take a short road trip when the pandemic ends, it is a destination highly recommended. As is the Northshire Bookstore which has several books by and about Edwin Way Teale.