GREEN NEWS & VIEWS
Rachel Carson (Part Two): Inspiring Intergenerational Nature Education
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, Maryland, we are working to create Springsong Museum, a place of joy, solace, and connection that brings her words and won- der to generations new and old. As development of this project is ongoing, we are sharing some of Carson’s writings and philosophy with the readers of Pathways, with this second installment focusing on learning about the natural world. During the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, with no preschool to occupy part of his day, my younger son made a new friend, which he unironically called his “Old Buddy.” He had started paying attention to the birds that would grace our front garden, and after we set up a small feeder that could be seen through the family room window, the bright yellow bird would regularly appear. My son would give us daily reports on Old Buddy, painted pictures of him, and was completely smitten, despite not yet knowing the bird’s ‘real’ name, American goldfinch. Four years later, my son’s enthusiasm has led him to learn more about goldfinches, that they love the seeds of our coneflowers and how their radiant feathers dull as the days get shorter. But as his under - standing deepens, we all still feel a familiar rush when that flash of yellow flitters by: Old Buddy! Nature education — learning from and about the natural world around us — is a lifelong endeavor. While many children in our region may be fortunate to have the opportunity to study water cycles, pollution, and other topics at some point in their school years, we can all tune into the wild wonders of where we live, deepening our connection to place. Rachel Carson, the writer and biologist who lived most of her adult life here in Silver Spring, Maryland, put the utmost value on deep - ening our interest in the natural world. “That would be Heaven to achieve,” Carson wrote about the prospect of completing her book that would help adults to nurture children’s innate wonder experienced in the outdoors. Planning to expand on her 1956 article for Women’s Home Companion , she envisioned a book with chapters including: ‘The Miracle of Life,’ ‘The World of Tiny Things,’ and ‘The Changing Year.’ With Silent Spring finally published and awakening readers to the harm we cause when trying to ‘control’ nature while ignoring the consequences, Rachel Carson wanted most to return to the subject that defined much of her career and life: wonder. Carson believed a strong sense of wonder, if nourished from a young age, could “last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile occupa- tion with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” And our rich connection with nature would benefit not only the individual and one’s community, but eventually the environ - ment itself. In a 1954 speech to women journalists, Carson said, “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” Developing Wonder But how does one begin to encourage the development of such life - long awe and interest in children? First, a child needs the “compan - ionship of at least one adult” with whom to marvel. Importantly, this adult does not need to be a nature expert, but someone who is willing to engage with the child in the beauty and mystery all around. Her advice to adults:
Carson talks with children in the woods along the Northwest Branch by her Silver Spring home. Photo credit: From Life magazine, October 1962. All rights reserved © 1962 Alfred Eisenstaedt (Time & Life Pictures)
Wherever you are and whatever your resources, you can still look up at the sky — its dawn and twilight beauties, its moving clouds, its stars by night. You can listen to the wind, whether it blows with majestic voice through a forest or sings a many-voiced chorus around the eaves of your house or the corners of your apartment building, and in the listening, you can gain magical release for your thoughts. You can still feel the rain on your face and think of its long journey, its many transmutations, from sea to air to earth… You can ponder the mystery of a growing seed, even if it be only one planted in a pot of earth in the kitchen window. Second, and related, Carson wrote that the foundation of an under- standing of the natural world is rooted in sensing. At the beginning of this journey, “it is not half so important to know as to feel.” If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wis- dom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused — a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admira- tion, or love — then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. Engaging the full range of senses — relying on our “eyes, ears, nostrils, and finger tips” — enables a deep relationship with our envi - ronment that leads to notions of familiarity, belonging, curiosity, and awe. From that receptive state, we may learn the names of species, study their behaviors and habitats, and develop a greater understand- ing of the rich, dynamic, and vulnerable life on earth. Carson’s own life, marked by struggles, was sustained by a con - stant sense of wonder, from her first memories as a child on her fami - ly’s wooded property in Western Pennsylvania to her final days at her home in Silver Spring, where the sights and sounds of birds and oth-
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PATHWAYS—Fall 24—13
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