Edwin Way Teale wrote that spring advances up the United States at an average rate of 15 miles per day. Imagine a new season wending its way up the coastline, through the river valleys, across the fields, and along the mountain ranges. An author and naturalist, Teale knew firsthand of what he spoke. In 1947, he and his wife Nellie packed their Buick, filled its glove compartment with marked maps, and drove with the intention of following “the triumphal pilgrimage up the map with flowers all the way, with singing birds and soft air, green grass and trees new-clothed….” The Teales had been making such trips since 1945. In part, their planning and taking such trips helped them deal with the grief over the loss of their son David, who was killed in World War II in Germany. The spring trip became a 17,000-mile journey and the foundation for Teale’s book, North With the Spring, one of four Teale wrote chronicling and capturing the seasons of North America. Nellie Teale, also a naturalist, played a central role in their explorations.

Starting their “rendezvous with a season” in February, 1947, in Florida’s Everglades, the Teales drove northward and watched, marveled, and delighted in spring unfolding before them. Teale, part scientist and part essayist, weaved stories and documented the flora and fauna of the natural world meticulously – juncos, eagles, grackles, jays, eels, wasps, ants, butterflies, baby cottontail rabbits, wild strawberries, lichen, pixie moss with tiny white flowers, water hyacinths, hemlocks, and tulip trees, to name only a partial list. The sheer variety is breathtaking. I’ve long been inspired by Teale and other gifted observers to be outdoors, slow down, and simply be mindful of what is happening right in front of me.

Observing nature in the ways of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, Teale saw the interconnection of all living things, as biographies of him note. His photograph, for instance, depicts how water lily leaves formed feeding platforms for migrating birds. During this “season of the young,” as he called it, Teale photographed baby cottontail rabbits and blue jay fledglings. Teale noted how a brown eaglet was waving its wings for the first times, making them stronger, in a bald eagles’ nest in Florida. The couple discovered the beauty of newly growing white violets, hepatica, Dutchman’s breeches, red columbine, and other wildflowers in a woodland glen of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In Virginia, they felt wonder at the subtle, ribbon-like variations of green from tree to tree, branch to branch near Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Indeed, spring was on the move.

Having traveled 120 days to follow the spring to its northernmost American destination and the boundary with Canada, they took in Vermont’s lush, verdant green and listened to the songs of bobolinks, who were newly back from Argentina, along the fences. The couple concluded their journey in the far north United States on the day of the Summer Solstice, in June. Ultimately, in their “long adventure,” as Teale called it, they had detected thousands of variations and changes in a choreography ever transitioning and never as abrupt as the turn of a page on the human calendar.

For the Teales, the road trip comforted them in their grief over their son’s death. It also represented the achievement of a dream that they had long had. What a dream it would be to follow this glorious season for thousands of miles and see the odyssey of it emerging constantly in different places. It’s something I’ve not done, but I’ve also found that I can see spring ever-new right around me. I go to certain places to see the changes, know and look at certain trees, listen each morning and evening to the birdsong, observe the lengthening daylight, seek out the returning warblers, and follow the growth out from bursting bud to blossom to fragile, then-full leaf.

In truth, I go a little crazy for spring, the way others do at Christmastime or for the peak of autumn’s colors. I am always filling my sensory bag of impressions and sightings. Nature is presenting gifts each day. If I don’t pay attention they will pass me by. Did I see the deep-pink crabapple blossoms enough before they turned? How long will that black-throated blue warbler, along a migration route, sing on a local farm’s fence posts? Even Teale, after thousands of miles of savoring spring, acknowledged the challenge the season presents. “We longed for a thousand springs on the road instead of this one,” he wrote in North With the Spring, “For spring is like life. You never grasp it entire; you touch it here, there; you know it only in parts and fragments.”

Still, time has brought a deeper perspective on spring. Even when one can’t trace spring northward at 15 miles a day, it’s amazing to follow its flow in a 15-mile corner – or 50 or 80 miles. Touching the “parts” of spring means witnessing the season’s incredible stages of renewal each day. Each of us watches particular signals, for instance, the color and intricate beauty that explodes in the blossoms and flowers on the trees, bushes, and woodland floor. The tiny forsythia buds give way to bursts of yellow along a pathway, and then the bushes start to change to green. On another lane, a large magnolia bud holds in its fuzzy, tight bundle contents that later unfurl into large, pink saucer-shaped flowers. As they loosen and give way, elsewhere the buds of a crabapple tree are poised to burst, and two weeks later transform to soft pink bouquets. Edwin Way Teale’s adventure captures the methodical surge of spring over many miles, and yet we can see the miracle of the season’s stages, right in our own backyard.

Here’s a look at buds and flowers in various stages during spring.

A magnolia tree bud, April 14

The first forsythia buds bursting, April 14

Forsythia buds, April 14

The magnolia tree blossoms in glory, April 23

The magnolia flowers at the peak of their show, April 27

Delicate crabapple buds, April 25

The same tree’s crabapple blossoms, May 14

Crabapple blossoms in full bloom, May 14

Blossom intricacies, May 14

For Spring Lovers

Each year, Mindful Walker has focused on walking in the city, town, and country to find spring’s beauty and exuberance. To further explore spring on Mindfulwalker.com, take a look at the following:

Spring Signals: The Songsters Return

Spring’s Many Enticing Invitations

The Glorious Palette of Spring Green

A Date With the Blossoms in New Paltz

Springtime at the Irish Hunger Memorial

View the slide show larger in Flickr.