Rachel Carson's Legacy
"Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent."
- Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson, who would turn 107 on May 27, was a loner during high school. She indulged in writing and reading when she was a girl, enjoying the works of Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The natural world, water in particular, was the common thread of the works of these novelists. This would play a part in her line of work.
The United States Postal Service issued a definitive stamp in her honor. The house in Colesville, Maryland, where she wrote "Silent Spring", her environmental masterpiece, became a National Historical Landmark. A bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was renamed the Rachel Carson Bridge. These, and a lot more, would indicate that Carson, a marine biologist, did something special. One must took note that she was an introvert, which leaders and achievers weren't. But the native of Springdale, Pennsylvania knew what she was capable of. She was also aware that one doesn't need to have a gift for gab and social skills in able to go places.
Nature was Carson's passion, which guided her throughout her life. The Rachel Carson Homestead, a five-room farmhouse where she grew up and wrote some of her finest works, had a verdant surrounding, which made it charming. It also kept the place apart from the town. There would be comparison between Carson's home and Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau spent three years. This set-up enabled them to spend a lot of time on introspection, the only difference was Thoreau's insights were on everything under the sun. Carson chose the one thing she cared the most.
"No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story - the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting."
- "Silent Spring"
"Silent Spring" had admirers - and critics. The book warned the dangers of pesticides, implying that humans (using it) were the ones harming the environment. Published in 1962, the book would be prophetic, as it came long before the likes of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) became part of our consciousness. Some would credit Carson on the rise of ecofeminism, its philosophy linking feminism and ecology. (Ecofeminists believe the connection is illustrated through the traditionally "female" values of reciprocity, nurturing and cooperation, which are present both among women and in nature.) All of these might have flattered Carson, if she were alive. But knowing her, she would be happy enough to do something for the environment.
