Next Monday is Earth Day, an annual event to support environmental protection. I can think of no better figure to celebrate in the week leading up to it than Rachel Carson (1907-1964), the scientist whose research supported Earth Day’s formation in 1970.
Rachel Carson’s most important book, Silent Spring, (1962) launched our contemporary environmental movement.1 The book begins with a fairy tale that asks us to imagine a world beset with mysterious disease:
Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies wept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.2
Here’s the tragedy: much of this was already happening in 1962. Carson goes on to show that the prevalent insecticide, DDT, was responsible. DDT was meant to protect us from mosquito-born illnesses like malaria but it also killed animals like birds (hence the title Silent Spring—referring to a Spring without bird song). As a carcinogen, DDT also hurt humans. And we were spraying kids with this stuff! Additionally, Carson warned that we can’t escape evolution. DDT might work now, but soon the mosquito would adapt—as it eventually did in countries like Burkina Faso that didn’t ban the substance.3
As she writes again and again: “…in nature, nothing exists alone.” To be clear: Carson wasn’t opposed to pesticides in general. Rather, she cautioned us to consider how the natural world is interrelated. With Silent Spring’s popularity, Carson led a successful campaign to ban DDT. Her work resulted in the formation of the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and Earth Day.
In the following clip, you’ll hear a spokesperson for the chemical companies followed by Rachel Carson who argues that humanity doesn’t have the power to suspend nature’s laws:
Last month, I visited Yale’s Beinecke Library to study the field notes Rachel Carson took while she wrote Silent Spring and her other brilliant books. In these notes, I saw the poetic sensibilities of a writer in love with her subject. And I saw the arsenal of information she assembled to go up against the big chemical companies that profited from toxic pesticides.
So let’s explore some of the notes Carson took as she prepared to write Silent Spring and catapult the environmental movement forward.
Carson’s Field Notes
Carson confessed that her favorite “laboratory” was the natural word. She always carried a small notebook in her pocket so she could record her observations. I saw over twenty of them at Yale—and I was mesmerized by her observations.
Carson explained that notes taken on the spot were especially valuable. They helped her record immediate impressions and “special observations.” She writes,
A few notes made on the spot, even under difficult conditions, have the freshness and detail that becomes blurred when one depends on remembering hours or days later. Even though rough, such notes bring the whole scene to life for me when later I wish to work it into the manuscript.4
Carson labeled some of her notebooks with the location they cover, such as the following field notebook for the National Bison Range and Red Rock Lakes Refuge:
Because she began her career studying sea life, Carson’s first books were a trio on the ocean: Under the Sea-Wind, The Edge of the Sea, and The Sea Around Us. As she wrote these books, she sat at the shore with a pencil and field notebook—small enough to fit in one’s palm.
We can see how Carson captures the “entire scene” in her notes in passages such as the following, which conveys the gorgeous sound of bird song:
The song of the white throat in the snow is so faint, so tentative, a whisper, hardly to be heard. Perhaps if one had never heard the full outpouring of his spirit in Spring he would not even hear this dreamy whisper above the trickling of melting snow and the rustle of oak leaves in the wind.5
Or, consider the following notes Carson took at Sippewisset Beach in Massachusetts. Here, she notes the birds flying over head:
Black-bellied plover —
3 immature flying over high up—
pure white chunky birds—ringing call like 3 notes from a bell on descending scale…
As she prepared to write Silent Spring, she began studying pesticides. Here, she wonders,
What makes insect[s] resistant?
In another notebook she writes her reflections on Katydids (a kind of cricket). She considers how
Insect voices probably the first ever heard on earth
Beneath that, she reflects on her cats and wonders why her cat isn’t interested in Katydids even though
Cats have that first quality of a good scientist—an insatiable curiosity—a desire to investigate all that is strange—to touch, to feel…
Carson loved her cats and considered them essential writing companions (as many of us do).
As she worked on Silent Spring, Carson kept her field notebooks by her bedside. Not only was Carson fighting the chemical companies, she was privately battling cancer. She would die two years after Silent Spring’s publication. But her impact continues to reverberate in our public policies. And, Silent Spring is once again a best-seller, thanks to its appearance in Netflix’s hit show, The Three Body Problem—a subject I’ll explore in this week’s postscript.
Notes on Carson’s Notes
Carry a notebook with you to capture your immediate thoughts: Carson put a lot of value in her immediate impressions of the world around her. This is especially important for details like the sound of a particular bird song or the color of a sea shell.
Spend time in nature and pay attention to small details: as we reflect on the importance of nature, I encourage you to spend some time outside with a pen and notebook. Record the sound of birds flying over head. Find an insect and chart its path. There is so much poetry in the tiny, everyday happenings of the creatures around us. Even if you live in a city, as I do, there’s plenty of birdsong and little critters to observe (for better or worse).
Go back over your notebooks: Not only did Carson type out her notes, she would go back and read through old notebooks. When deciding which notebooks to donate to Yale University, Carson read through her old notebooks and told a friend:
There was about it a sort of dewy freshness and innocence and wonder…6
Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.
Till Monday,
P.S. Paid subscribers look for more on Carson and The Three Body Problem later this week.
The historian Douglas Brinkley explains that before Carson, there was little environmental policy. Rather, we protected the environment with conservation in the tradition of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt. Carson’s Silent Spring changed that.
Brinkley, Douglas. Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. HarperCollins, 2022.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Harper Collins, 2002, p. 2.
Clearly, Carson was a beautiful writer. She majored in English before until Zoology attracted her interest. During her first job writing reports for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, she realized that she was “merely getting something to write about.” Carson loved the natural world and the written word with equal fervor.
Kit R. Roane Weiser Sarah, ‘Rachel Carson’s Warning on D.D.T. Ignited an Environmental Movement’, Retro Report, 2017.
Carson Autobiographical Material, Beinecke Library, Box 108 Folder 2077.
Carson Field Notes, Beinecke Library, YCAL MSS 46, Box 108 Folder 2081.
Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009, p. 468.
I LOVE this post. Am going to put a small notebook in my purse right now and carve out time to observe the insects meandering around the garden. ❤️
What an inspiring human. This was a beautiful read! I also love the variety of her pocket notebooks.