Edwin Way Teale
Great nature travel! It's very old--published in 1972--but I am just now reading it. And it's still just as gorgeous and poetic and exciting today as it would have been so many years ago. He writes of plants and insects and animals, weather and scenery to knock your socks off. In particular there's a time when they drove through firefly heaven--winged lanterns--and another time when they stayed up all night to watch a meteor shower. His descriptions were so vivid that I can't imagine why I've never done that.
One odd note--in the time of his journey, the 1970s, he made many notes of the scarcity of bald eagles and osprey. He lamented their absence and often made comments on the empty nests left bare as a symbol of vanishing wild. If only he were alive today--what a rejoicing he would have at the return of these majestic birds!
He died in 1980, no doubt before the knowledge became common that DDT had been the agent of the birds' decline. He had some theory about why they were scarce--sorry I forgot what it was. But he was happily wrong about that.
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