Autumn Across America

American Seasons #3

by Edwin Way Teale

The author describes his experiences traveling from Cape Cod to Point Reyes, California along the northern part of the U.S., and shares his observations on nature along the way

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Travel, Environment, Science, Memoir, Science Nature

386 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Edwin 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.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teale is a lesser-known naturalist who specialized in insects and edited or introduced works by famous natural historians of a previous era like Thoreau, Fabre, Hudson and Muir. In the late 1940s he and his wife Nellie set out on a meandering 20,000-mile road trip from Cape Cod on the Atlantic coast to Point Reyes on the Pacific to track autumn from its first hints to its last gasp. It was the third of four seasonal journeys the Teales undertook in part to distract them from their grief over their son David, who was killed in Germany during WWII. Their route passes through about half the states and experiences nearly every landscape you can imagine, some that are familiar to me and others that would be totally new. They delve in rockpools; observe bird and monarch migration; cross desert, mountains and prairie; and watch sea otters at play.

Although there is a sense of abundance – they see a million ducks in one day, and pass dozens of roadkill jackrabbits – like Aldo Leopold, Teale was an early conservationist who sounded the alarm about flora and fauna becoming rarer: “So much was going even as we watched.” His descriptions of nature are simply gorgeous, while the scientific explanations of leaf color, “Indian summer” and animal communication are at just the right level for the average reader. This was a lucky find at the Book Thing of Baltimore this past spring, and if I ever get the chance, I will delight in reading the other three in the quartet.

Some favorite lines:

“The stars speak of man’s insignificance in the long eternity of time; the desert speaks of his insignificance right now.”

“Those to whom the trees, the birds, the wildflowers represent only ‘locked-up dollars’ have never known or really seen these things. They have never experienced an interest in nature for itself. Whoever stimulates a wider appreciation of nature, a wider understanding of nature, a wider love of nature for its own sake accomplishes no small thing.”


Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my natural hstory readings, I've encountered Teales name many times but had not acutally read him. What a treat!
His marvelous elegaic stye is paired with accurate, insightful scientific information about topics that really interest me: geology, birds, hibernation, migration, etc. I learned a lot. The human stories (especially that of the deaf-mute who searches for his dog lost in the woods) are as interesting as the natural history.
The edition I read was published in 1956, the year after my birth. I loved Teale's references to the 48 US states and many aspects of American life I recall from my early childhood. He makes reference to several species that were on the brink of extirpation 60 years ago, but have now made encouraging comebacks. I'm certain his was a lone voice crying in the wilderness (literally) then on many conservation issues we take for granted today.

[Debby Detering · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book by Edwin Way Teale that Skus and I have read aloud, every word of it. We don't read aloud every evening, sometimes missing weeks at a time (We didn't take this with us when we traveled). Teale's descriptions are worth savoring word by word. He and his wife Nellie began their journey at the Monomoy at the elbow of Cape Cod on the first day of fall and wandered westward. The book ends on December 20 on the westward tip of Point Reyes Peninsula, 30 miles north of the Golden Gate, after 20,000 driving miles.

A brief sample: "I sat down and for a long time watched the coming and going of the plovers. Every muskrat house had a killdeer perching on it. Soon a sparrowhawk dropped down on the stub of a long-dead tree near the cattails... wherever I looked along the shore the noisy plovers were in motion, running, stopping alighting, taking to the air. Their flashing wings gave vibrant life to this scene of desolation. The clamor of their calls intermingled into wild and deeply stirring music."

This book was first published in 1936, and with its companions, North with the Spring, Journey Into Summer, and Wandering Through Winter, is still available in numerous editions.

These are books you can open at random and enjoy a paragraph or so, or, as we did, you can follow the Teales from state to state as a season unfolds and feel you have widened your own horizons while accompanying them.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my third time to journey with Edwin Way Teale and his wife Nellie as they traverse the U.S. on their seasonal travels. For this autumn trip they left from the east coast, near Cape Cod's most eastern point, on the first day of fall in 1956 (It may have been 1955, not sure). They traveled mostly west, but there were many detours and back-tracking to see specific points of interest. They ended their journey on December 21st on the west coast, at Point Reyes, from where they could see a lighthouse on a ledge below the cliffs where they were standing, and the Farallon Islands in the distance. Once again I filled most of a notebook with descriptions of places they visited, animals and plants they sited, and tidbits of information about the natural world they both loved. If I get to visit the west coast again in the future, or some of the other locations they discuss, I will carry this notebook along with me, and make a special effort to stop at places I had not heard of before reading this book.

[Cayenne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful! The last two pages of "Mountain Snow" especially struck me as Teale discusses the increasing demands on our time and space. "Time and space--time to be alone, space to move about--these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow." Seeing beyond his time. Time to ponder and to be still amidst the beauty of nature is something difficult to find now and something to be cherished as great riches.

[Peter Corrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second in this sublime series that started with a random Goodwill find of their summer sojourn ('Journey Into Summer'). As planned, I started 'Autumn Across America' on the first day of fall, September 22, 2025. Oh to have been in the back seat of the car in that autumn of 1952 with Teales, observing, listening, reflecting and thinking! It is a trip immersed in the nuances and rhythms of the natural world--human concerns enter in of course but are secondary. Never once in two books have they even mentioned the make or model of the car they are driving, the focus is always on the natural world. These books are truly something of a national treasure. They are constantly paying homage to the early naturalists and explorers in this land, some famous others hardly known. Thoreau of course and John Muir but lesser known early naturalists such as Thomas Nuttall, David Douglas (the Douglas fir!), Thomas Coulter, Leslie Peltier (amateur astronomer in Ohio), and Norman A. Wood who discovered of the nesting place of the Kirtland's Warbler in the Au Sable River basin of Michigan. The same area area of north central Michigan is where he relates the sad saga about disappearance of the Arctic Grayling fish due to overfishing, logging (with rising water temperatures) and introduced species with which it could not compete. The last Michigan graylings were seen in the 1936, but they still exist in Montana.

From Cape Cod on the first day of autumn they wander 20,000 miles across mainly the northern USA to end at Point Reyes, CA on the last day of the season. Many places I had never been especially through Michigan (the Kirtland's Warbler story) and northern Minnesota (the headwaters of the Mississippi) where the hardwood forest leaf color was spectacular. I was pleased to find that I had been (a long while ago!) to many of the places the Teales visited in the far west including Mt. Rainier, the Olympic Peninsula, the Redwood and Sequoia forests, coastal CA and even the endpoint at the lighthouse at Point Reyes, CA. But of course those were without the benefit of the insight of this great naturalist. Ruminations on fall leaf color, riverine sediment depositions, the source and nature of dust, bird and insect migration patterns and more--the Teales curiosity seems unbounded. There are several national parks and monuments of which I was only vaguely or not aware of. If I did take cross-country drive, the Teale books would be fine companions. The pica and the sea otter will become two of your favorite creatures after reading Teale's whimsical yet informative accounts.

As I noted in the previous book on their Summer trip, Edwin Teale played a key role in the early environmental movement in this country. I read elsewhere that he was a key mentor to the young Rachel Carson, and encouraged her to write on the DDT issue, the result being 'Silent Spring' in 1962. In fact, University of Connecticut papers from their Edwin Way Teale collection make this clear and Teale even wrote in the March 1945 (!) issue of Nature Magazine, a blistering critique of indiscriminate DDT use and the potentially catastrophic results it could wreak on the natural world. Teale’s article foreshadows Silent Spring, both in message and tone according to the UCONN paper.

I have to give another 5-star to this outstanding book. I already have my copy of 'Wandering Through Winter' which was I believe was the 4th he wrote, but will be my 3rd and ready to start on the solstice December 21st this year!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and delightful to read, there is something for everyone in this book. Through Teale's eloquent descriptions, I learned science, history, and obscure and fascinating facts. The book was peppered with stories of people and nature photography. I felt like I was along for Teales's autumn journey. I hope to read his other books about the seasons.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

had been looking forward to this for a long time
travelling across 1950's USA as autumn unfurls across the continent
nicely paced and so enjoyable to make the journey with dedicated and knowledgable naturalist.

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edwin Way Teale's Autumn Across America was one of the first books I picked up--back in late 2020--when I thought I might be ready to take up reading again. I don't remember now how I'd heard of Edwin Way Teale, but I wound up ordering Autumn Across America off eBay. I thought a naturalist's travelog might be just the ticket, but instead I had to retreat. I wasn't ready for a book that required thinking in order to be appreciated.

There are some Peter May books at our local library, no contemplation required there. I managed to get through The Lewis Man instead. Even that was a bit much so, to be safe, I went back to old favorites from my youth, Lillian Beckwith, Mary Stewart, D.E. Stevenson, and even Agatha Christie, all comfortably undemanding and familiar. That suited fine at the time.

Meanwhile, Autumn Across America has been calling me from its place on the shelf, with my bookmark still at page 234. Last week I picked it up again, and nothing on page 234 rang a bell. I backtracked ten pages, a hundred pages. I remembered the eelgrass and its near-extinction, or at least I remembered remembering that I was already familiar with the plight of the eelgrass, or seagrass as it is called in Britain, when on Countryfile, a British show which we like, today's efforts to restore the lost seagrass beds along the English cost were profiled. I couldn't remember why, while we were watching Countryfile, I was familiar with zostera marina and its near extinction, both sides of the Atlantic. Now I know.

I remembered that Edwin Way Teale and his wife, Nellie, lost their only child, their son, David, in World War II. I remembered that their journeys up and down and back and forth across the United States, gathering the notes and photographs that Teale would use for his books, Autumn Across America, North With the Spring, Journey Into Summer, and Wandering Through Winter, were partly undertaken in an effort to come to grips with their grief. But, there were some really big gaps.

Never mind the bookmark at page 234, I began again at page 1. The Craters of the Moon park and its lava field; Hawk Mountain; the adorable pika and their stacks of hay; a man and his dog, Gerald Wear and Poncho, separated from each other while camping in the Wallowa Mountains; all, when encountered again, jogged my memory a bit, but not enough to make rereading tedious.

This may not have been the book for me in 2020, but it is a book for 2023. I have already ordered Wandering Through Winter from a seller on eBay.

Any quibbles I have with this book are era-related. Edwin Way Teale was a white man writing in the 1950s, and he writes as, unfortunately, one would expect a white man writing in the 1950s to write, which is more an explanation than an excuse.

Were he still living today, I hope he would apologize. He seems to have been a decent man, so I think he might have felt compelled to do so. In his writing, he gives the descendants of the original occupants of the continent he is discussing so intimately short shrift. He seems not disrespectful so much as disinterested. Indians and red men, as he refers to the nation's first inhabitants, did not produce the reams of nature study that so fascinate him. Their actual contribution is an unfortunate omission, and I must fault him for it.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I walked slowly back over the ridge. Descending the farther side my foot scuffed in the gravel. A pebble rolled away down the incline before me. What vast stretches of history were encompassed by the span of that pebble! Lying there since glacial times it had been warmed by the springs and cooled by the autumns of aeons of time. How much of human life and plover life and grasshopper life had passed away while its insensate existence had gone on and on. Yet, surely, better a single moment of awareness to enjoy the glory of the senses, a moment of knowing, of feeling, of living intensely, a moment to appreciate the sunshine and the dry smell of autumn and the dust-born clouds above-better a thousand times even a swiftly fading, ephemeral moment of life than the epoch-long unconsciousness of the stone.

As autumn is fast approaching us, with the colors in the mountain peaking the next 2 weeks, I savored this wide-ranging, months long tour of the northern US in the 50s. It captured a moment of time that seems so far away, thousands of blackbirds on one tree, a MILLION ducks!, birds at every pond, cabins easily found, skies alight with the Milky Way. Not his most poetic offering, and filled with the kind of history that seems less relevant to modern times, but otherwise is eternal.

Looking about us, where the mirror of the water reflected sky and clouds and autumn leaves, we speculated on how far the stirring colors of fall go in stimulating our minds. The clear, bracing air of this third season, with its lowered humidity and its touch of chill, is given credit for the alertness and sense of well-being that characterizes our autumn mood. But is there not a corresponding lift to the mind in this riot of color, exciting and exhilarating? In the forest, fall is the season of light. The aureate leaves, the golden carpet of fallen foliage reflecting rays upward from the ground, these fill the deciduous woodlands with a luminous radiance unknown at other seasons of the year. Henri Amiel noted in his Journal Intime: "The scarlet autumn stands for vigorous activity; the gray autumn for meditative feeling." Later in the season there would come slaty skies, brown leaves, gray autumn. But now we wandered in the multicolored early days of fall, the time of vigor and elation.

The tide rose to full and made its turn. And all across the continent behind us another tide, a greater tide-the tide of the seasons-was also at its turn. Summer, during these last of the August hours, was accelerating its yearly slide into autumn. Curlew and godwit, dowitcher and plover already were moving southward along the narrow flyway of the shore. And on the mainland, in the waning summer nights, bobolinks were taking wing for far-off South America. These were the early ripples of migration, ripples we would later see mount into the great waves of the autumn flight.

There is a midsummer. There is a midwinter. But there is no midspring or midautumn. These are the seasons of constant change. Like dawn and dusk they are periods of transition. But like night and day and day and night they merge slowly, gradually. As Richard Jefferies once wrote, broken bits of summer can be found scattered far into the shortening days of fall. Only on calendars and in almanacs are the lines of division sharply defined. Just as in the far reaches of the Everglades we had found a pre-spring spring, a season that was still winter on the calendar but already showing evidences of change, so now, while summer still officially ruled, we were in a pre-autumn autumn surrounded by the signs of coming fall.

"Do not the flowers of August and September," Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal, "generally resemble suns and stars-sunflowers and asters and the single flowers of the goldenrod?" If you examine closely the face of Helianthus you see that it forms a whole floral galaxy. The great sun of its central disk is made up of scores, sometimes hundreds, of five-pointed florets that sweep toward the center in curving lines like the arms of a spiral nebula. Each golden star is a separate flower. A sunflower is not one flower but a community of flowers. It represents one of nature's last and most successful inventions in the floral line. It belongs to the Compositae, the largest group of flowering plants, comprising some 13,000 species. It is as though, on some day of inspiration, Nature watched a bee flying from one single flower to another single flower and suddenly the thought occurred: Why not have a score or a hundred flowers growing together in one head? Then a visiting insect would pollenize many blooms at once. That is the essential idea of the Compositae. At one stroke, the clustering of many flowers together increases the chances of the blooms.

The acid soil of New England, its wide stretches of hardwoods, its numerous sugar maples, its rolling or mountainous character, the sunshine of its autumn weather, all these contribute to the glory of this annual display. The birches of Maine, the aspens of the White Mountains, the sugar maples of Vermont, the long rainbow of the Connecticut River Valley cutting from top to bottom through New England, the Berkshires-mention these to anyone who has traveled widely through a New England fall and you will evoke instant memories of superlative beauty.

Down the long , gradual decline of the Appalachian Plateau, far into Ohio, we rode next day. America is the Land of the Turning Wheel-a myriad wheels turning in factories, millions of wheels turning on the highways. Here in the Middle West, with its Akrons and Detroits, we were riding through one of the strongholds of the wheel. But here also we noted another side of America. That undercurrent of poetic feeling that runs through the great mass of men was revealing itself everywhere on place-signs and on rural mailboxes. Here, as all across the land, it was finding expression in the names bestowed by farmers on their homesteads: The Seven Pines, Hidden Acres, Long Furrow Farm, Willow Bend, Green Pastures, Killdeer Farm, Far Hills, Hickory Stick Farm, The Windy Oaks, Meadow Lane Farm.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And I fell to considering again the beauty of the world, so hard to think of leaving..."

Autumn Across America follows naturalist Edwin Way Teale (and his wife Nellie) on their journey by car from the Atlantic to Pacific coast through the course of one autumn. This is the third installment in Teale's "The American Seasons" series, a cool travel-plus-naturalism idea I would love to emulate myself someday. In this one, the dynamic duo stick mostly to the northern states, winding their way from Cape May, NJ to Vancouver, Canada and then down the west coast to southern California. I loved this one more than North With the Spring, mostly just because the states and places Teale visited were of greater personal interest to me - the Badlands, Redwoods, the Mississippi River, Olympic National Park, Idaho, and the overwintering sites of monarch butterflies are all places I yearn to see for myself someday and deeply enjoyed seeing through Teale's eyes 70-some years ago. He told many fascinating stories and nature facts along the way, and described beautiful natural surroundings in vibrant prose. I learned new things and was filled with awe. Very enjoyable read for me!

Some favorite quotes:
-"It is easier, we decided that night, to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man's insignificance in the long eternity of time; the desert speaks of his insignificance right now."
-"Time and space - time to be alone, space to move about - these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow."

[Dawn Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a lot of information about plants, animals and natural systems encountered by the author and his wife as they travelled with the fall across the USA from the East Coast to the West Coast. It was written in the 1950s and some of the observations that the author off handedly makes about things he sees along the way that are typical scenes of that day were surprising and interesting to me. It was written before the Clean water Act, and probably before most people began to develop any sort of environmental awareness, but the author throws in information about extinction and pleas for the preservation of species and landscapes. This book is one of a quartet that he wrote about the American Seasons, each one a description of a different trip. I enjoyed it very much

[Amy Dance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this through the fall season. I loved learning about the different ways fall presents itself across the nation & how different plants & animals prepare for or react to the season. I loved their observations of places I am familiar with & learning of new places.

I learned about bird & butterfly migrations, seagrasses, unique trees, fern harvesting, the story of a lost dog finally found, pikas & trumpeter swans & more. It was fun to compare population #s of species then & now. For example, trumpeter swans, nearly extinct in 1933 (70), were protected in 1924 & had rebounded to 642 in 1954. Current #s- 46,000-- A success story.

[David Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My third "read" in Teale's accounts of his seasonal journeys across America with his wife Nellie. I found that the changes in the United States between the time this book was written and contemporary times seem to be greater in this book than in the previous two of his accounts that I've completed (i.e., winter and summer). Also, Teale's attitudes toward Native Americans gave me pause; his attitude seems to be a bit condescending and paternal. Nevertheless, the natural history and the writing are still spot-on, and isn't that why this series continues to endure and why people read these books more than a half-century after they were published?

[Darlene Messenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by Edwin Way Teale, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for one of the four of these travel books, he continues to educate and inspire naturalists today. His travels, with his wife, across America, showcase little known places from coast to coast, all the while writing of flora and fauna, birds and insect, wildlife and history of this great land of ours. They begin their travels in Spring, moving through the seasons book by book. Note: this is the third of the series but in my humble opinion, you may start wherever you want. Next up for me is Wandering Through Winter; book four.

[Anastasia Tuckness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teale and his wife journey across American through autumn. I read the whole east-west section but didn't make it to the southern return trip since winter arrived in my life and I didn't want to read about fall anymore! :)

These books are super gentle descriptions of the flora and fauna (and a few people) they encounter. Great low-key reading.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I so badly wanted to love this book. I am thrilled to own it and tried to read it and have put it away for good. My son asked why I was reading a book that sounded good but was not interesting to me. I didn't have a good enough answer to keep going.

[Aaron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite authors. This book is a treasure!

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Probably my favorite of the series so far.

[James Greening · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful nature and travel writing, and during my favorite time of year over all of the United States. Reading doesn't get any better than this! Onward to Winter!

[Vera Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Autumn Across America in a used book store 3 years ago, and plopped it on my shelf with dozens of other “read when I get around to it” books. Finally, this autumn, I got to it.

On their leisurely, 20,000-mile journey that took Edwin Teale and his wife to twenty-six states, they observed nature changing gears from summer to winter. The colored and falling leaves of the northeast and the migrating birds, butterflies and even beetles, the mysteries of hibernation, the geology, the human history–nothing escaped their keen curiosity and careful observation. Back home in New England, when the trip was complete, Teale expanded on his observations with research into the why of things.

I found myself mesmerized by such intellectual explorations as the one in Oregon about why salmon return to the same stream in which they hatch. Teale reports on scientific experiments that involved transporting salmon eggs from one place to another before they hatched, transporting fingerlings from one stream to another, and testing salmon’s ability to smell. They inevitably came back to the water that smelled the same as that where they hatched. And every stream has a different chemical makeup because of the different plants that grow in greater or lesser profusion.

Over and over again, this book reminded me to travel slowing and observantly. Whether he was traversing land I was familiar with (the coasts of Oregon) or land I’d like to get to know (the forests where ferns are harvested), I learned new things.

At one point, he dislodges a pebble that rolls down an incline. He ponders the long history of that pebble and how much life has passed by–glaciers, birds, insects and humans have all been here.

“Yet surely, better a single moment of awareness to enjoy the glory of the senses, a moment of knowing, of feeling, of living intensely, a moment to appreciate the sunshine and the dry smell of autumn and the dust-born clouds above–better a thousand times even a swiftly fading, ephemeral moment of life than the epoch-long unconsciousness of the stone.”

I don’t know a better way to warn a traveler not to become simply a rolling stone.

This is part of a review I wrote at A Traveler's Library. Read more here.

[Professor]

Only made it about 40 pages in and it was fascinating as a snapshot of both naturalist thinking in its era and the state of America's wildlife at the time. Unfortunately I started reading it FAR too late in the season and I don't want to keep reading it in the Winter, so I'm giving it up, for the time being.

[Ellen]

Before autumn ends, I've jumped into my first Edwin Way Teale book. I'm taken by his writing on the natural and made-made worlds, and, with some 53 years gone by since he wrote it, the ways in which so much has changed. More when I'm another 100 pages in.

[多余人-Lishnye Lyudi · Rating 4 out of 5]

自古逢秋悲寂寥，我言秋日胜春朝。晴空一鹤排云上，便引诗情到碧霄。

[Susan C Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem.