Her name is Rachel Carson. She first wrote 3 books about the sea: Under the Sea Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), & The Edge of the Sea (1955). Then she wrote Silent Spring (1962) which is a devastating critique of the lethal effect of chemicals and pesticides on nature and all living things. The chemical &DDT& was the worst widely-used offender. P> My mind went to Rachel Carson this week because of Pam's lovely hymn drama about St Francis of Assisi. St Francis was, after all, the first environmentalist! We all know about his legendary ability to talk to birds. Actually, talking to birds is easy; I do it myself when I feed them in the parsonage backyard. Getting them to talk back is the secret, and I'm sure that is what St Francis was able to accomplish.
The title of her book, Silent Spring, refers to the consequences of the mindless use of chemical sprays to kill certain insect pests, such as the mosquito and the gypsy moth and the screw worm fly. Chemical sprays kill all insects, but 90% of insects are good. If they are killed things go out of kilter right away. Rachel Carson was moved to write her book when she heard about mosquito-control planes flying over Nassau & Suffolk counties on Long Island, in 1957. This is one report she received.
The chemical bath killed 7 of our songbirds outright. We picked up 3 more dead bodies the next morning by the door. They were birds that trusted us and built their nests in our trees year after year. The next day 3 were scattered around the bird bath. On the following day one Robin dropped suddenly from a branch in the woods. We were heartsick. Grasshoppers and bees also disappeared.
Hence the title Silent Spring. Rachel convinced the world that the indiscriminate use of poisonous chemicals changes Springtime itself -- the songbirds stop singing, the crickets stop chirping, and the bees stop buzzing. Spring becomes silent. Hence "Silent Spring."
It was said of Rachel Carson, "A few thousand words from her and the world took a new direction." The great Supreme Court Justice Wm O Douglas predicted that Silent Spring would become "the most important chronicle of this century for the human race."
When she began writing, the term "environment" had few of the connotations it has today. Conservation was not yet a political force. The word "ecology" -- derived from the Greek for "habitation" -- was unknown. The concept of ecology, and the inter-connectedness of all life, was central to everything Rachel Carson wrote.
The chemical industry did not like Silent Spring.
The director of NJ's Dept of Agriculture complained:
We have to deal with the objections of a vociferous, misinformed group of bird-loving, nature-balancing, organic- gardening, unreasonable citizenry that has not been convinced of the important place of agricultural chemicals in our economy.
This is a little fable invented by Rachel Carson's critics:
A boy and his grandfather sit in a forest clearing, cracking acorns. Gramps explained that they were reduced to eating acorn nuts because a book had come out expressing the view that no chemicals should be used in agriculture. So now we live "naturally," he said to his grandson. Your mother died "naturally" from malaria that mosquitoes gave her; your dad passed away "naturally" in a famine when the grasshoppers ate up everything; now we're starving "naturally" because the blight killed the potatoes we planted last Spring. I only wish the author of that book had stayed around to share the joys of living "natura ly," but she made so much money on the book she moved to a country where her book is banned. Farming there is still "unnatural." Pass the acorns.
A scientist wrote: "Her book is more poisonous than the pesticides she condemns."
Her response to all the criticism was: "The practitioners of chemical control have no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper."
This excerpt from a letter indicates something about her soul:
The manuscript is in the hands of Mr Shawn of the New Yorker. Last night he called to tell me he had finished reading. His reactions were everything I could have asked or hoped for and I felt an enormous surge of relief. Suddenly I knew that my message would get across. I took Jeffie [her cat] into the study and played Beethoven's violin concerto. The tension of 4 years was broken and I let the tears come. I could never again listen happily to the song of a thrush if I had not done all I could. The thought 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 completed the book -- now it had its own life. (Jan 1962)
Rachel Carson received bountiful praise and many awards and honors for Silent Spring. Shortly before she died of cancer, and only 2 years after it was published, she received the Schweitzer Medal from the Animal Welfare Institute. Her book had been dedicated to Albert Schweitzer, the theologian who had become a physician in order to work in the jungles of Africa. This is a part of what she said when she accepted the Medal:
I often re-read Albert Schweitzer's account of the day when there dawned in his mind the concept of "Reverence for Life," on a remote river in Africa. He had traveled laboriously upstream for 3 days in a small river steamer, traveling 160 miles to treat the ailing wife of a friend. On the way he had been deep in thought, struggling to formulate that universal concept he had been unable to find in any philosophy. At sunset on the 3rd day the steamer came upon a herd of hippopotami. There flashed into his mind the phrase, "reverence for life," which all the world now knows. In his various writings, we may read Dr Schweitzer's philosophical interpretation of that phrase, but the truest understanding of "reverence for life" comes, as it did to him, from some personal experience -- perhaps the unexpected sight of a wild creature, perhaps some experience with a pet. Whatever it may be, it is something that takes us out of ourselves, that makes us aware of other life.
Maybe Rachel Carson didn't go to church in the narrow sense of the word. But Rachel Carson was a good Christian because she went to church in the larger sense -- the earth was her church and all living creatures sat in the pews with her!
Let us close by listening to 2 poems that were cited as 2 of her favorites: "Sea Fever" and Roadways" by John Masefield.
Rachel Carson: "I never predicted the book would be a smashing success. I doubted it would. So all this is unexpected and wonderful to me."