{"id":1333,"date":"2014-05-24T18:23:11","date_gmt":"2014-05-24T22:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2014-09-10T18:23:54","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T22:23:54","slug":"traveling-near-and-far-with-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/beyond-gotham\/traveling-near-and-far-with-spring","title":{"rendered":"Traveling Near and Far With Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edwin Way Teale wrote that spring advances up the United States at an average rate of 15 miles per day. Imagine a new season wending its way up the coastline, through the river valleys, across the fields, and along the mountain ranges. An author and naturalist, Teale knew firsthand of what he spoke. In 1947, he and his wife Nellie packed their Buick, filled its glove compartment with marked maps, and drove with the intention of following \u201cthe triumphal pilgrimage up the map with flowers all the way, with singing birds and soft air, green grass and trees new-clothed\u2026.\u201d The Teales had been making such trips since 1945. In part, their planning and taking such trips helped them deal with the grief over the loss of their son David, who was killed in World War II in Germany. The spring trip became a 17,000-mile journey and the foundation for Teale\u2019s book, North With the Spring<\/a><\/em>, one of four Teale wrote chronicling and capturing the seasons of North America. Nellie Teale, also a naturalist, played a central role in their explorations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starting their \u201crendezvous with a season\u201d in February, 1947, in Florida\u2019s Everglades, the Teales drove northward and watched, marveled, and delighted in spring unfolding before them. Teale, part scientist and part essayist, weaved stories and documented the flora and fauna of the natural world meticulously \u2013 juncos, eagles, grackles, jays, eels, wasps, ants, butterflies, baby cottontail rabbits, wild strawberries, lichen, pixie moss with tiny white flowers, water hyacinths, hemlocks, and tulip trees, to name only a partial list. The sheer variety is breathtaking. I\u2019ve long been inspired by Teale and other gifted observers to be outdoors, slow down, and simply be mindful of what is happening right in front of me.<\/p>\n

Observing nature in the ways of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, Teale saw the interconnection of all living things, as biographies of him note<\/a>. His photograph, for instance, depicts how water lily leaves formed feeding platforms for migrating birds. During this \u201cseason of the young,\u201d as he called it, Teale photographed baby cottontail rabbits and blue jay fledglings. Teale noted how a brown eaglet was waving its wings for the first times, making them stronger, in a bald eagles\u2019 nest in Florida. The couple discovered the beauty of newly growing white violets, hepatica, Dutchman\u2019s breeches, red columbine, and other wildflowers in a woodland glen of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In Virginia, they felt wonder at the subtle, ribbon-like variations of green from tree to tree, branch to branch near Thomas Jefferson\u2019s Monticello. Indeed, spring was on the move.<\/p>\n

Having traveled 120 days to follow the spring to its northernmost American destination and the boundary with Canada, they took in Vermont\u2019s lush, verdant green and listened to the songs of bobolinks, who were newly back from Argentina, along the fences. The couple concluded their journey in the far north United States on the day of the Summer Solstice, in June. Ultimately, in their \u201clong adventure,\u201d as Teale called it, they had detected thousands of variations and changes in a choreography ever transitioning and never as abrupt as the turn of a page on the human calendar.<\/p>\n

For the Teales, the road trip comforted them in their grief over their son\u2019s death. It also represented the achievement of a dream that they had long had. What a dream it would be to follow this glorious season for thousands of miles and see the odyssey of it emerging constantly in different places. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve not done, but I\u2019ve also found that I can see spring ever-new right around me. I go to certain places to see the changes, know and look at certain trees, listen each morning and evening to the birdsong, observe the lengthening daylight, seek out the returning warblers, and follow the growth out from bursting bud to blossom to fragile, then-full leaf.<\/p>\n