Naturalist's Almanac

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907. There aren't any big annual celebrations of this date, but I think it would be a good idea for anyone who values the natural world to acknowledge her birthday every May by remembering who she was.

Thanks to her last book, Silent Spring, which was published in 1962 and led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, Rachel Carson will go down in history as the mother of the environmental movement. But that is who she became, not who she was when she began.

Long before she became an environmentalist, she was a writer. She first won a prize for her writing when she was only ten years old. She submitted a story to St. Nicholas, a children’s magazine, and won their Silver Badge. The next year she published another story and won the Gold.

She was hooked. In college she intended to major in English in hopes of becoming a professional writer, but then she discovered biology. A college friend remembers her saying, “I always wanted to write, but I know I don’t have much imagination. Biology has given me something to write about.”

And write about it she did. Around the edges of a full-time job and major family responsibilities, she wrote five books. Her best known include The Sea Around Us, which won the National Book Award and became an international bestseller, A Sense Of Wonder, which was published after her death, and, of course, Silent Spring, which changed the way we think about ourselves and the natural world.

When asked why she wrote Silent Spring, a book she didn’t really want to write, she said, “I discovered ... that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.”

Rachel Carson brought both rigorous science and eloquent writing to the task. In the spring of 1963, amidst the furor that followed the publication of Silent Spring, her dual competence served her well. She was invited to appear on television with her chief adversary, and, assured of both her science and her writing, she never flinched.

Her closing remark was, “I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”

We in the generations that have followed would do well to remember Rachel Carson’s challenge — perhaps by repeating it to ourselves in her honor every May 27.

MORE INFORMATION:

Rachel Carson Biography
http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/cars-rac.htm

The Women in History Web site offers a brief biography of Rachel Carson plus several links to other good Web sites.

RachelCarson.org
www.rachelcarson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=homepage

This Web site, created by Carson biographer Linda Lear, includes lots of good information including a substantial biography, the New York Times obituary, and links to other Web sites.

Rachel Carson - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson

The long Wikipedia article on Rachel Carson is full of links to other articles in the Wikikpedia and also includes a long list of external links.