Lost Woods

by Rachel Carson

  Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is – or should be – the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all – perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows.

  If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man’s future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces. [ … ]

  21

  [1956]

  Two Letters to Dorothy and Stanley Freeman

  CARSON SHARED MOST of her experiences exploring the tide pools and rocky shores near her cottage on Southport Island with her summer neighbors Dorothy and Stanley Freeman. With Dorothy in particular, Carson found a kindred spirit of deep emotional significance. In 1956 Carson’s mother was an invalid, and Carson’s niece Marjorie and her four-year-old son Roger, whom Carson later adopted after Marjorie’s death, had come to Maine for a visit. Carson’s account of their midnight exploration of the spring tide was written in a letter to the Freemans, who were not in Maine at the time.

  Similarly, an October sunset produced the backdrop for a great migration of waterfowl across the horizon which moved Carson once again to share her experience with the absent Freemans.

  DEAR STAN AND DOROTHY –

  This morning I achieved the difficult feat of getting up without disturbing anyone but Jeffie, so maybe I can write a letter before breakfast.

  Knowing you can’t be at Southport as soon as you want to be, I’m always of two minds now about talking of the place or telling you anything special that happens – should I share it with you, or is it mean to talk about things you want so badly to see or do yourselves? That, in general, is my predicament, but this time I have to tell you about something strange and wonderful.

  We are now having the spring tides of the new moon, you know, and they have traced their advance well over my beach the past several nights. Roger’s raft has to be secured by a line to the old stump, so Marjie and I have an added excuse to go down at high tide. There had been lots of swell and surf and noise all day, so it was most exciting down there toward midnight – all my rocks crowned with foam, and long white crests running from my beach to Mahard’s. To get the full wildness, we turned off our flashlights – and then the real excitement began. Of course, you can guess – the surf was full of diamonds and emeralds, and was throwing them on the wet sand by the dozen. Dorothy dear – it was the night we were there all over, but with everything intensified. A wilder accompaniment of noise and movement, and a great deal more phosphorescence. The individual sparks were so large – we’d see them glowing in the sand, or sometimes, caught in the in-and-out play of water, just riding back and forth. And several times I was able to scoop one up in my hand in shells and gravel, and think surely it was big enough to see – but no such luck.

  Now here is where my story becomes different. Once, glancing up, I said to Marjie jokingly, “Look – one of them has taken to the air!” A firefly was going by, his lamp blinking. We thought nothing special of it, but in a few minutes one of us said, “There’s that firefly again.” The next time he really got a reaction from us, for he was flying so low over the water that his light cast a long surface reflection, like a little headlight. Then the truth dawned on me. He “thought” the flashes in the water were other fireflies, signaling to him in the age-old manner of fireflies! Sure enough, he was soon in trouble and we saw his light flashing urgently as he was rolled around in the wet sand – no question this time which was insect and which the unidentified little sea will-o-the-wisps!

  You can guess the rest: I waded in and rescued him (the will-o-the-wisps had already had me in icy water to my knees so a new wetting didn’t matter) and put him in Roger’s bucket to dry his wings. When we came up we brought him as far as the porch – out of reach of temptation, we hoped.

  It was one of those experiences that gives an odd and hard-to-describe feeling, with so many overtones beyond the facts themselves. I have never seen any account scientifically, of fireflies responding to other phosphorescence. I suppose I should write it up briefly for some journal if it actually isn’t known. Imagine putting that in scientific language! And I’ve already thought of a child’s story based on it – but maybe that will never get written.

  Then everyone got up, and the day began! [ … ]

  Dear Dorothy and Stan,

  I hope this may reach you on your anniversary, but whenever it comes I know you will accept it as a little observance of that occasion. You know this is the first year since I have really known you that I have had to write in order to wish you happiness on the day, and many years of continuing happiness together. Having shared Your Day to some extent for the past two years, it has become a sort of Anniversary for me, too, with deep meanings that I know you understand without my putting them into words.

  There are certain events that I’ve come to associate with the week – if not the actual day – of your anniversary, and now I must tell you what happened Friday evening. It had been one of those bright, clear days with a piercing wind from the northwest, and at sunset there was not a cloud in the sky. There had been a thought in my mind all day, and shortly after sunset I went into the living room and began to scan the horizon. Almost instantly I saw a faint line like a wisp of smoke above the Kennebec – then more and more until I knew that one of those great migrations of waterfowl was moving toward Merrymeeting Bay. All, as far as I saw, were far away in the western sky, but with the glasses their formations and even the individual birds stood out clearly. And the flights continued until dusk made the drifting ribbons invisible. One more detail: I had also had in mind that on that evening I should see the new moon – the moon of the month in which I must leave here for another season. But when I looked into that clear, after-sunset sky I couldn’t see it. Behind the spruces on the far shore of the Bay the sky was a pale orange, fading above into yellow and then a cold, gray-blue. Then the ducks appeared, and as I was searching the sky with my glasses, suddenly I saw the moon just above the horizon, a thin sickle, but so enormous that at first I could hardly believe it actually was the moon! Its color was so close to that of the sky that without the glasses I couldn’t see it. Last night it was clear in the evening sky, and soon, I suppose, I can begin to watch for its reflection in the Bay.

  22

  [1956]

  The Lost Woods. A Letter to Curtis and Nellie Lee Bok

  DEEPLY INVOLVED IN ORGANIZING the Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy in the summer of 1956, Carson had preservation issues much on her mind. Through her friendship with Curtis Bok, President Judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, whose family foundation had established the Mountain Lake Sanctuary in Mountain Lake, Florida, Carson had seen firsthand how effective personal philanthropy could be in saving beautiful places.

  That fall Carson spent a windy morning exploring the shore and adjacent woods some distance north of her property. She and Dorothy Freeman called the area the “Lost Woods,” after the title of a favorite essay by the English naturalist H. M. Tomlinson. She wrote to Dorothy,

  If only [the land] could be kept always just as it is! If ever I wish for money – lots of it – it is when I see something like that. [ … ] Just for fun, tell me what you think, and let’s pretend we could somehow create a sanctuary there, where people like us could go, as my
friend said of the Bok Tower and grounds, “and walk about, and get what they need.” Well, if no one ever thinks of it, it certainly won’t happen; if someone does think hard enough, it just might.

  Carson felt she now had a model, at least in spiritual intent, of how the Lost Woods might become a sanctuary, if she could just put enough money together from her future writing. Energized by this idea, Carson wrote to the Boks asking for advice on how to proceed.

  Although the purchase price eventually proved beyond her means, Carson’s dream has been fulfilled, and a large part of the shore she loved is now protected through the efforts of the Boothbay Regional Land Trust.

  DEAR CURTIS AND NELLIE LEE,

  [ … ] I think you understand this in me, even though we’ve had little chance to talk about it – my feeling for whatever beautiful and untouched oases of natural beauty remain in the world, my belief that such places can bring those who visit them the peace and spiritual refreshment that our “civilization” makes so difficult to achieve, and consequently my conviction that whenever and wherever possible, such places must be preserved. [ … ]

  When a few years back and for the first time in my life, money somewhat beyond actual needs began to come to me through The Sea Around Us, I felt that, almost above all else, I wished some of the money might go, even in a modest way, to furthering these things I so deeply believe in. [ … ]

  [The Lost Woods’] charm for me lies in its combination of rugged shore rising in rather steep cliffs for the most part, and cut in several places by deep chasms where the storm surf must create a magnificent scene. Even the peaceful high tides explore them and leave a watermark of rockweeds, barnacles and periwinkles. There is one unexpected, tiny beach where the shore makes a sharp curve and there is a protective jutting out of rocks. At another place, something about the angle of the shore and the set of the currents must have produced just the right conditions to trap the driftwood that comes down the bay, and there is an exciting jumble of logs and treetrunks and stumps of fantastic shape. I suppose there is about a mile of shoreline. Behind this is the wonderful, deep, dark woodland – a cathedral of stillness and peace. Spruce and fir, some hemlock, some pine, and hardwoods along the edges where a fire once destroyed what was there and set in action the restorative forces of nature. It is a living museum of mosses and lichens, which in some places form a carpet many inches deep. Rocks jut out here and there, as a flat floor where only lichens may grow, or rising in shadowed walls. For the most part the woods are dark and silent, but here and there one comes out into open areas of sunshine filled with woods smells. It is a treasure of a place to which I have lost my heart, completely. [ … ]

  I have had many precious moments in these woods, and this past fall as I walked there the feeling became overwhelming that something must be done. I had just played a small part in helping to organize a Maine chapter of the Nature Conservancy. My rather nebulous plans of last fall had to do with trying to enlist aid from that quarter. But while the Conservancy can help, the real job has to be pretty well provided for. [ … ]

  23

  [1957]

  Clouds

  TELEVISION WAS A NEW MEDIUM for writers in the 1950s, and Carson was not initially enamored of its creative merits. She did, however, recognize television’s potential educational value.

  When the idea for a show on clouds was proposed by an eight-year-old viewer of the CBS show Omnibus who wanted to see a program on “something about the sky,” the Ford Foundation’s TV-Radio Workshop approached Carson to write a television script on clouds. She agreed to collaborate with the Omnibus producer and with meteorologist Vincent Schaefer, who had discovered the process of cloud seeding and whose film footage formed the cinematic basis of the show. Her objective was to change the popular conception that cloud types and formations had no particular scientific significance, and to provide an awareness of a dynamic process that linked clouds to the broader web of life. The resulting script was vintage Carson, with an emphasis on the long journey of wind and water in a constantly renewing and unending cycle. This venture deeper into the science of weather and climate renewed her interest in writing on the subject of global climate change.

  “Something about the Sky” aired on CBS Omnibus on March 11, 1957, and Carson and her family gathered around her brother’s television set to watch her first successful endeavor in an unfamiliar medium. Several days later, Carson capitulated and bought her own television set.

  I. Introduction

  (Clouds drifting by, of various types, but all in motion)

  AMONG THE EARLIEST MEMORIES of each of us are the images of clouds drifting by overhead,

  fleecy, fair-weather clouds promising sunny skies –

  storm clouds bringing portents of rain or snow.

  The farmer plowing his field reads the weather language of the sky.

  So does the fisherman at sea, and all others who live openly on the face of the earth.

  In those of us who live in cities, awareness of the clouds has perhaps grown dim; and even those who live in open country may think of them only as a beautiful backdrop for a rural scene, or an ominous reminder to carry an umbrella today.

  The clouds are as old as the earth itself – as much a part of our world as land or sea.

  They are the writing of the wind on the sky.

  They carry the signature of the masses of air advancing toward us,

  across sea or land.

  They are the aviator’s promise of good flying weather, or an omen of turbulent air.

  Most of all they are the cosmic symbols of a process without which life itself could not exist on earth.

  II. The Ocean of Air

  Today we are going to look at clouds as perhaps we have never looked at them before.

  We are going to pretend we live on the bottom of an ocean – an ocean of air in which clouds are adrift –

  just as sponges and coral and spidery crabs inhabit the floor of the water ocean.

  But it will not be hard to pretend that, for in fact that is just what we do. In relation to the air ocean, we are exactly like deep-sea fishes, with all the weight of tons of air pressing down upon our bodies.

  And there are other similarities.

  Our world is divided into three parts: earth, sea, and air.

  Out there is the ocean of water – familiar, though always mysterious.

  Its greatest depths lie 7 miles down.

  From surface to bottom pressure increases, from 35 pounds

  to the square inch at the surface to 7½ tons in the greatest depths.

  Waves move across it. Great currents flow through it like rivers.

  Up there is another ocean – the air ocean that envelops the whole globe.

  Its depth, from airless space down to where it touches earth, is some 600 miles.

  Like the water ocean, its substance becomes more dense

  from surface to bottom. Only the lowermost layers are

  dense enough to support life.

  Living on the bottom of this ocean of air, we support on our bodies a pressure of about a ton to the square foot of surface.

  In this lower layer, too, clouds are born and die.

  Like the sea, the atmospheric ocean is a place of movement

  and turbulence, stirred by the movements of gigantic waves – torn by the swift passage of winds that are like ocean currents.

  Now that we are learning to read the language of the sky, we can interpret much of the structure of our air ocean by looking at the pattern of the clouds.

  Look, for instance, at this ribbed pattern of high clouds.

  Remember that they are perhaps 8 or 10 miles above us, and so the cloud bands that look rather close together are in reality perhaps 20 miles apart.

  Like white caps on the crests of ocean waves, these clouds mark the crests of gigantic atmospheric waves – waves surging through space in an undulating pattern.

  The bands of cloud mark the upsurges of condensation; the


  wave troughs of blue sky, the warmer air valleys of evaporation.

  Clouds give other clues to the unseen structure of the ocean of air.

  Aviators know the danger of flying in mountainous country, where savage downdrafts in the lee of high peaks may suddenly snatch a plane out of the sky.

  The science of clouds is now showing how warning signals are hung out in the sky for all to read them.

  When strong winds strike a mountain, the atmosphere up to a height of thousands of feet above the land is thrown into a strong wave motion which extends out over miles of valley on the lee side.

  Clouds form on the crests of these atmospheric waves –

  the strange, almond-shaped lenticular cloud.

  So mobile it seems a living thing, the cloud nevertheless maintains its fixed position at the crest of the air waves, neatly balancing condensation and evaporation, built up on the windward side and eaten away on the lee side.

  Lenticular clouds scattered out over the valley on the lee

  side of a mountain range are signs to the pilot of dangerous turbulence.

  Here again the clouds are writing a story of violent movement within the atmosphere.

  Winds that rush down mountain slopes are known the

  world over –

  the foehn wind of the Alps – the chinook of the Rockies –