WANDERING THROUGH WINTER

Rounding out the year of travel which they began some twenty years ago, the Teales add the fourth and final season to their excursions through America (North with the Spring. Journey Into Summer, Autumn Across America). They started out on December 21 where California joins Mexico with ""the unguessed experiences of 20,000 miles of winter"" before them; they ended their journey with the Vernal Equinox, north of Caribou, Maine. Between came all manner of jaunts into nature: following the gray whales in Baja California, seeing the road runner in New Mexico, prairie dogs in Lubbock, Texas; driving through an ice storm in Indiana, the snows of the Adirondacks. They met people of similar mind along the way: Sibyl Means with her 99 cats, Connie Hagar, who has added twenty bird species to the list of her area in Texas. They visited the home of the late Wilson Alwyn Bentley whose legacy as snowflake photomicrographs, and Mr. Ranney who was harvesting maple sugar in Vermont. The Teales seem to accept their experiences as they come, and some of the objects of their absorption appear rather trivial in the telling. The style is relaxed to the point of dullness, which is a pity when one is witness to a winter wonderland. However, the audience for the trip has been established by the earlier volumes and may enjoy the low-key- off-handed information about many species.