This year marks the 45th anniversary of the
publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark book, Silent
Spring. Twenty-seven years after her death, Carson – who
would have been 100 this year – continues to influence Americans’
daily lives. Her legacy is reflected all the way from the
Environmental Protection Agency’s restrictions on pesticide use
down to the organic sections of our mainstream grocery stores.
A dozen contributing writers and scientists honor
Carson’s legacy in a new anthology, edited by Peter Matthiessen.
Four Westerners contribute essays chronicling how a woman they
never met changed their lives. They relate special moments of
insight: A flock of brown pelicans flying in formation, the
migration flight of monarch butterflies, a child’s grief at the
thought of awakening to a future morning without birdsong.
Californian Freeman House realized that his retreat from
society would save neither brown pelicans nor salmon. After reading
Carson’s vivid books on the sea, Jim Lynch of Washington knew he
could make his readers feel Puget Sound’s mud squish between their
toes in his own novel, The Highest Tide. Terry
Tempest Williams of Utah respects Carson’s moral courage and “her
willingness to align science with the sacred, to admit that her
bond toward nature is a spiritual one.” Colorado native Robert
Michael Pyle reminds us that seeing Carson only as a warrior
against DDT means missing the depth of her scientific knowledge and
her dedication to an intimate relationship with nature.
In the 1960s, Carson’s message was timely,
but her insight into the tensions between industry and government
institutions and nature make her perspective timeless. As a college
student, Pyle believed simple activism and education could save the
Earth. Today, in the midst of what he describes as the “current
environmental dark ages,” he sees it’s not so simple: The same
chemical industry that may have caused his wife’s ovarian cancer
contributed to her recovery.
Still, Pyle feels inspired
by Carson’s message of nature’s power to sustain and heal us: “At
its heart is Carson’s wish that every child in the world have ‘a
sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout
life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and
disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with
things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our
strength.’ “
Courage for the Earth: Writers,
Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel
Carson
Edited by Peter Matthiessen
208 pages, softcover: $14.95.
Houghton Mifflin,
2007.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Sounding the alarm for nature.
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