Erika Recommends: Jill Lepore on Rachel Carson

Photo by EJJohnsonPhotography from Getty Images

I first visited the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, Maine, by chance. Wanting to stretch my legs on a road trip, I searched for parks on my phone and found this one-mile loop through the forest to a salt marsh. It’s a gorgeous spot, named for a writer best known for a book, Silent Spring, about the dangers of pesticides, but whose heart belonged to the sea.

Historian Jill Lepore explores Carson’s story and legacy in this great piece in the New Yorker. Despite my firm stance as “mountain” in the cutthroat choice of being a mountain or a beach person, Carson makes a compelling case: “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and the flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”

Lepore makes a compelling case for the importance of all Carson’s work, not just Silent Spring. She describes the force of Carson’s prose—the knowledge and wonder that imbues her work. The wonder, I think, is what’s key and something we try to always keep at the forefront in making Threshold. There are many problems to solve in the world, but there’s also a lot of marvel, beauty, and hope. Holding all of these things together—the problems and the wonder—is how we make environmental stories that inform and inspire.

I recommend pairing this essay with this episode of The Last Archive podcast about Carson and birds (and hosted by Lepore).

Thanks for reading,

Erika Janik

Managing Editor