Returning North with the Spring

At winter’s end in 1947, driven by the devastating loss of a son killed in World War II, naturalist Edwin Way Teale followed the dawning spring season northward in an amazing 17,000 mile odyssey from the Everglades to Maine. He wrote about the adventure in North with the Spring. Its sequel Wandering Through Winter won the Pulitzer Prize.

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, trekking through the Okefenokee wetland, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Great Dismal Swamp, 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. Yet he also discovers that many of the sites Teale described have been newly “rewilded” or permanently protected by the government. Homage to the past, report on the present, glimpse into the future—this book honors what has been lost in the years since Teale’s famous journey and finds hope in the small tenacities of nature.