Ode to Rachel Carson and ‘Silent Spring’

The sedge has withered from the lake, / And no birds sing.

--Epigraph in “Silent Spring” from Keats

FALLON—Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was one of the most influential books ever written in America. As a muckraking classic, “Silent Spring” belongs in the elite company of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852) and Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” (1906).

Published in 1962, “Silent Spring” was a devasting attack on the pesticide industry.

“The few birds seen anywhere were moribund,” Carson wrote. “They trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.”

The reason: pesticides in general and DDT in particular. “They should not be called ‘insecticides’ but ‘biocides,’ ’’ Carson noted.

The chemical industry counterattacked furiously. It declared that “the vermin would inherit the Earth.” It resorted to ad hominem attacks just as General Motors did with muckraker Ralph Nader because he did not drive.

The pesticide industry called Carson: “a nun of nature,” “an hysterical woman” and “merely a birdwatcher.” In the ultimate denunciation, one company labeled her a communist.

The chemical companies tried to frighten her with a libel suit. She was unfazed. Truth was on her side, an ironclad defense in libel cases.

The book was inspired in 1958 by a letter from a friend in Massachusetts who wrote: DDT had “killed seven of our lovely songbirds outright…All of the birds died horribly…Their bills were gaping open and the splayed claws were drawn up to their breasts in agony.”

These reflections about Rachel Carson were prompted by the staging of a one-woman play during the Spring Wings Bird Festival in Fallon recently. Called “A Sense of Wonder,” the play was written by Broadway actress Kaiulani Lee and performed by her at the Barkley Theater.

Lee was Carson reincarnated. About 100 people watched spellbound at the impersonation of a woman who refused to be silent when a great crime against nature was being committed.

At first no magazine dared print her assault for fear of advertisers. Press critic George Seldes was in the same situation in the 1940s. Most of the press refused to publish his blistering attacks on the tobacco industry for the poison it was advertising.

Finally, however, William Shawn of The New Yorker had the courage to back Carson’s moral outrage. He printed the three-part series of “Silent Spring” in 1962.

The subsequent book had a tremendous impact. It led to the banning of DDT in America and ignited the modern environmental movement.

Stowe wrote a terrible indictment of slavery. Sinclair’s blast at the meat-packing industry in Chicago led to the Pure Food and Drug Act. And Carson ripped the evil that was killing small birds and preventing large birds, such as the bald eagle, from reproducing because their DDT-contaminated eggs were being crushed in the nest.

Carson wrote “The Sea Around Us” in 1950 for which she was showered with book awards and honors while topping the best-seller list for 39 weeks.

Mrs. Carson influenced young Rachel, inculcating in the child the wonders of nature and the love of birds. Another great influence was Albert Schweitzer, medical missionary, theologian and Bach expert. His most profound philosphical insight was a reverence for life, an ethical system based on respect for all living creatures.

Carson was a first-rate scientist and scholar. Shy, reserved and private, a small woman who carried a big stick. Carson belongs in the Environmental Hall of Fame with Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey.

Personal birding note

I have been a birder since Boy Scout days when bird study merit badge was required for Eagle Scout. Birdwatching has been my lifelong avocation ever since.

My life list of North American birds is a modest 406. (The Sibley guide lists 810 species that can be seen in North America.) But I had never tallied 58 birds in one day as I did during the Spring Wings weekend at the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, 16 miles northeast of Fallon. (Stillwater, one of the birding hot spots in America, is on the Pacific Flyway, a major migration route.)

Among the 58 were: loggerhead shrike, long-billed curlew, snowy plover, great egret and the “golden-slippered” snowy egret. The day before I saw 44 species birding along the wetlands near Fallon. Among them were: white-faced ibis, red-necked and Wilson’s phalaropes, black-necked stilt, Bonaparte’s gull and the beautiful avocet.

No life listers for me but always the joy of birding. I am indebted to the Boy Scouts for giving me a lifelong passion for birds, wildlife and the environment.