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Edwin Way Teale, 1899-1980
Nature Mystic, naturalist, photographer, Writer
Our minds, as well as our bodies, have need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.
Edwin Way Teale
Edwin Way Teale was born on June 2, 1899 in Joliet, Illinois. Teale was a mystic naturalist, a photographer, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote numerous books about nature and its hidden mysteries.
To me, this glorious mystic naturalist reveals on almost every page what a great soul he is. . . I think Edwin Teale has done a tremendous amount of good in his books, especially one called North with the Spring and his latest one, The Circle of the Seasons.
Flower A. Newhouse
Teale's life-long interest in the natural world was fostered by childhood summers spent at his grandparents' "Lone Oak" farm in Indiana's dune country. At the age of nine, Teale declared himself a naturalist.
In 1923 Teale married his wife and lifelong naturalist companion, Nellie. In 1926 Teale graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a Master's Degree in English Literature. The Teales would make Long Island, then later in 1959, Hampton, Connecticut their home. Teale built a small cabin to the dimensions of Henry Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond, where he would often look out his window and write. Teale remarked, We have the feeling here, that whenever we look out the window there may be something exciting to see. Adventures lie all around us. Teale's writings and photographs would open America's eyes to the small beauties of nature all around us.
In the wilderness, we are spiritually reinvested with our inner powers once again.
Edwin Way Teale