A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm

Rating:
Summary: Living lightly on the land
Review: Edwin Way Teale won both the Pulitzer Prize and the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing. If you are interested in the natural history of our land, his 'American Seasons' series is the perfect place to start reading. All of his books, including "A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm" reflect the philosophy of Thoreau and Muir and the value they placed on the meaning and beauty of the natural world.

This author belongs to the same generation of nature writers as Rachel Carson, Loren Eiseley, Sigurd Olson, and Lewis Thomas, but his writing style is less didactic, gentler, more wondering. He shares his life on an old Connecticut farm now reverting to its original wildness, with keen observation and unabashed wonder. Edwin Way Teale was the opposite of cynical. He was a man who loved to wake up in the morning, whether it was to freshly fallen snow, the "trip-hammer tattoo" of a flicker "in the full flush of his springtime exuberance," or even the fiery blisters from a run-in with poison sumac. As to the latter experience, he writes that it was shared with John Burroughs who, sixty-eight years before on the banks of the Hudson, "had viewed the world through one eye...while the other was swelled shut as a result of encountering poison sumac."

In chapter one, "Three Circles on a Map," Edwin and his wife Nellie spend three years searching for the perfect home, surrounded by various aspects of American wilderness, e.g. woods, a stream, a swamp, open meadows (not your usual home-buyer's requirements). After so many years of crisscrossing the United States and recording their travels in the four 'American Seasons' books, they were ready to sink roots and find contentment in their immediate surroundings. They finally find their dream house in a rural northeastern corner of Connecticut, and settle in to observe her wildlife and her seasons.

"There is, in the gaze of a skunk, something innocent and childlike," writes Teale, and so it is with him, too. He writes with knowledge, yet with an 'innocent gaze,' of his and Nellie's years on Trail Wood Farm. Perhaps the reason this book appeals so strongly to me is that I'm also dreaming of a place to settle lightly on the land.

Aren't we all?

Instead of the usual city-dweller's "Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamn," wouldn't it be more satisfying to spend an afternoon, like this author, watching a woodchuck prepare its burrow for hibernation, or observing two skunks wrestling over a bit of food?

Through the pages of Teale's book, we are able to live in nature, at least vicariously.

Contemporary essayist and natural historian Ann Haymond Zwinger writes a very sad introduction to "A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm." It colored my whole reading of the book, so you might want to save the introduction for last.

Rating:
Summary: Living lightly on the land
Review: Edwin Way Teale won both the Pulitzer Prize and the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing. If you are interested in the natural history of our land, his 'American Seasons' series is the perfect place to start reading. All of his books, including "A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm" reflect the philosophy of Thoreau and Muir and the value they placed on the meaning and beauty of the natural world.

This author belongs to the same generation of nature writers as Rachel Carson, Loren Eiseley, Sigurd Olson, and Lewis Thomas, but his writing style is less didactic, gentler, more wondering. He shares his life on an old Connecticut farm now reverting to its original wildness, with keen observation and unabashed wonder. Edwin Way Teale was the opposite of cynical. He was a man who loved to wake up in the morning, whether it was to freshly fallen snow, the "trip-hammer tattoo" of a flicker "in the full flush of his springtime exuberance," or even the fiery blisters from a run-in with poison sumac. As to the latter experience, he writes that it was shared with John Burroughs who, sixty-eight years before on the banks of the Hudson, "had viewed the world through one eye...while the other was swelled shut as a result of encountering poison sumac."

In chapter one, "Three Circles on a Map," Edwin and his wife Nellie spend three years searching for the perfect home, surrounded by various aspects of American wilderness, e.g. woods, a stream, a swamp, open meadows (not your usual home-buyer's requirements). After so many years of crisscrossing the United States and recording their travels in the four 'American Seasons' books, they were ready to sink roots and find contentment in their immediate surroundings. They finally find their dream house in a rural northeastern corner of Connecticut, and settle in to observe her wildlife and her seasons.

"There is, in the gaze of a skunk, something innocent and childlike," writes Teale, and so it is with him, too. He writes with knowledge, yet with an 'innocent gaze,' of his and Nellie's years on Trail Wood Farm. Perhaps the reason this book appeals so strongly to me is that I'm also dreaming of a place to settle lightly on the land.

Aren't we all?

Instead of the usual city-dweller's "Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamn," wouldn't it be more satisfying to spend an afternoon, like this author, watching a woodchuck prepare its burrow for hibernation, or observing two skunks wrestling over a bit of food?

Through the pages of Teale's book, we are able to live in nature, at least vicariously.

Contemporary essayist and natural historian Ann Haymond Zwinger writes a very sad introduction to "A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm." It colored my whole reading of the book, so you might want to save the introduction for last.

Rating:
Summary: Take a Trip With Author Edwin Way Teale Through Trail Wood
Review: From his beginning book, A Book About Gliders, to his Pulitzer Prize Winning American seasons series, Edwin Way Teale takes his readers on another trip, this time through his own backyard. Teale first recounts his desire to leave his suburban home on Long Island in quest of the perfect naturalist's home. After a balloon ride over a picture perfect farm-house and 130 acres in Hampton, Connecticut, Mr. Teale finally discovers what he has been looking for: "Trail Wood". Relax and enjoy the incredible descriptive writing style of Edwin Way Teale through the woods and wildlife of his home in Connecticut. Now an Audubon Society Sanctuary open to the public, you'll be amazed your not already there.

Rating:
Summary: Beware of Misinformation
Review: The book itself is accurate only because it is printed word for word from Mr. Teale's original published work in 1974. However, the foreword was an extreme disappointment by stating that Nellie Teale "chose to die on the anniversary of Edwin's death." I have been a devoted fan of the Teales' and have visited their beloved Trail Wood. Mrs. Teale died in August of 1993 whereby Mr. Teale passed away in October 1980. It was nearly 13 years but not on the same day or month as we are told in the foreword. The misrepresented foreword would lead a reader to believe that Nellie's death was perhaps suicide when in fact she quite possibly died of cancer sinse all donations were asked to be contributed to the Cancer Society. This book along with all of Edwin Way Teale's books is well worth reading. The publisher would be better off leaving out a foreword and adding back into the paperback version, all the wonderful black and white photographs that can be viewed in the original hardcover copies.