GREEN NEWS & VIEWS
Rachel Carson (Part Three): Resolving Ourselves To Do Good in the Natural World
BY REBECCA HENSON
Rachel Carson passed away 60 years ago this past April, but we are not finished learning from her work and her example. In Silver Spring, Mary - land, we are working to create Springsong Museum, a place of joy, solace, and connection that brings her words and wonder to generations new and old. As development of this project is ongoing, we are sharing some of Car - son’s writings and philosophy with the readers of Pathways, with this third installment focusing on how we are compelled to act. It was late January 1962 and Rachel Carson had worked tirelessly over the previous four years to write a book that, like her earlier best- sellers, would first be serialized in the pages of The New Yorker be- fore hitting the bookstores. Silent Spring — as it was titled in both the magazine and full-length hardcover, extensively footnoted versions — would prove to be a massive publishing success and a vital spark igniting the modern environmental movement. Only equal in scale to its outsized impact was the herculean effort required by its author who never wanted to take on such a feat. From her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, Carson wrote a letter to her dearest friend upon receiving a call from The New Yorker editor Wil- liam Shawn, confirming its publication:
Rachel Carson bird watching at Hawk Mountain, PA, during fall migration, October 1945. Source: Shirley Briggs Collection, Iowa Women’s Archives Later, after she moved to Maryland and was working in Washington, DC, Carson found community through an interest in birds. Encourag - ing her colleagues at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to join her, she went on birding trips with the local Audubon Naturalist Society (ANS, now named Nature Forward, https://natureforward.org/). Be - coming a member and then board member and editor of the Society’s
… I said I could never again listen happily to a thrush song if I had not done all I could. And last night the thoughts of all the birds and other creatures and all the loveliness that is in nature came to me with such a surge of deep happiness, that now I had done what I could – I had been able to complete it – now it had its own life.
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The Bonds of Birdsong Carson wrote Silent Spring because she resolved to do so. An author who had finally established a celebrated career through writing books devoted to sharing the wonders of the sea with the public in factual and beautiful, often poetic style, Rachel Carson was led to take on a very different, wildly challenging, and professionally risky project by a lifelong love for the natural world and the birdsong that made it im- possible to ignore. Once committed to the task, Carson’s personal life tested her resolve even further with the need to adopt her grand-neph- ew Roger and her own unrelenting health woes, including metastasiz - ing breast cancer. The birdsong that would inspire and motivate her to write Silent Spring had filled her life with companionship, wonder, and meaning. As a child Carson spent countless hours exploring outdoors, led first by her mother Maria, and then accompanied by her dog Pal and the wild creatures she considered as “friends.” “The call of the trail on that dewy May morning was too strong to withstand,” a 15-year-old Rachel wrote of one these exhilarating days, continuing:
Late in the afternoon a penetrating “Teacher! Teacher! TEACHER!” reached our ears. An oven-bird! A careful search revealed his nest, a little round ball of grass, se- curely hidden on the ground. The cool of approaching night settled. The wood-thrushes trilled their golden melody. The setting sun transformed the sky into a sea of blue and gold. A vesper-sparrow sang his evening lul- laby. We turned slowly homeward, gloriously tired, glo- riously happy!
PATHWAYS—Winter 24-25—35
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