Wandering through winter; a naturalist's record of a 20,000-mile journey through the North American winter by Teale Edwin Way 1899-1980

Author:Teale, Edwin Way, 1899-1980
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Winter, Natural history, Natural history
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead
Published: 1965-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

on the brown flood of the muddy Missouri. Everywhere around us there were evidences of the feeding of beavers. And at a sharp turn on one of the tributaries, where spring freshets had strewn a jumble of debris up the bank, we peered into the mouth of a beaver den. This opening was only a foot above the water line, well hidden from view by the tangle of branches and logs.

Toward the end of that afternoon, as we were traversing an area dense with giant horsetails, the scouring rushes of the pioneers, Milonski recalled an eerily beautiful sight he had glimpsed on a winter day. In the midst of a swirling snowstorm a bewildered flock of snow geese had flown low toward him and turned almost overhead. The white birds were virtually invisible in the white storm. All he could see was a multitude of black wing tips moving in seemingly bodiless flight. I envied my companion that dramatic moment of beauty, just as earlier I had envied another companion who told of seeing migrating yellow-headed blackbirds alight on a field near the Salton Sea in such numbers that for acres the level ground seemed carpeted with gold.

The next day was February 15. Dawn came slowly. The sky, overcast and dark, pressed low. Cold rain began falling as I left Nellie snug in a motel room on the outskirts of Jefferson City and started for Otterville. On a farm somewhere in that region lived Henry Mullins, the man who had seen and handled the ninety-pound beaver.

For fifty miles I rode west, up the Missouri. The gray falling rain added to the gray of the winter hills, the sodden cornfields, the streamside sycamores. When I came splashing into Otterville, all of its 400 or so inhabitants were indoors. The streets were deserted. Outside a furniture store I spotted the one telephone booth in town. But when I looked under "M" in the directory, I found no one named Mullins. For a time I circled about on puddle-studded streets seeking the post office. When I discovered it, it was closed and empty, in

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