The Urgency of Rachel Carson’s Sea Trilogy in a Time of Climate Crisis | Literary Hub

Rachel Carson first saw the sea when she arrived at the MBL in 1929 as a beginning investigator. More on Carson in Woods Hole is here.

On a blustery morning in October 1945, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and government science writer, climbed to the summit of Hawk Mountain. She was accompanied by other birdwatchers, including her companion, artist and illustrator Shirley Briggs, who worked with her in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and was known as a very fine amateur ornithologist.

Briggs memorialized the moment in a photograph that offers a more ecstatic presentation of Carson than the prim, resolute figure we have come to know from later publicity photos and media appearances. After the National Book Award. After the meeting with the President’s science advisors and the testimony before the Government Operations Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate.

After her findings on the harms of pesticides kicked off a massive campaign by the chemical industry to discredit her.

After the cancer diagnosis.

In the Hawk Mountain photo of 1945, Rachel Carson is both beautiful and at ease. Balanced on a rocky outcrop, black leather jacket open to the wind, she scans the horizon with a pair of leather-strapped binoculars, the whole of Berks County, Pennsylvania, unfurling before her—forest and valley, field and mountain—like a verse from a Pete Seeger song. Read more of the article here...

Source: The Urgency of Rachel Carson’s Sea Trilogy in a Time of Climate Crisis ‹ Literary Hub