J.B. MacKinnon is a Vancouver journalist
whose work has appeared in media ranging from The New Yorker to
Adbusters, writing on ecology, the outdoors and other topics. This
article first appeared in Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.
Some os Nature's most ezquisite handiwork is on a miniature scale, as ahyone knows who has applied a magnifying glass to a snowflake.
Rachel Carson/Quotes
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth. It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world. As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life. For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that you use it so little.
More Rachel Carson:
“The
most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the
contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even
lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the
chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life
but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now
universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister
and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature
of the world-the very nature of its life.” -- Rachel Carson
“Why
should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid
surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies,
the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who
would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?” -- Rachel Carson
“The
lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved
for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under
the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.” -- Rachel Carson
“Eventually
man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he
must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with
an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically
re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the
centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his
mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote
parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively.” -- Rachel Carson
“There
is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the
abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that
create the tide.” -- Rachel Carson
“To
stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and 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.” -- Rachel Carson
“Those
who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that
will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing
in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes
after night, and spring after winter.” -- Rachel Carson
“The
more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of
the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” -- Rachel Carson
“It
is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth
and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and
humility.” -- Rachel Carson
“Now
I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with
nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been
challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature
but of ourselves.” -- Rachel Carson
“The
question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life
without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called
civilized.” -- Rachel Carson
“If
I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the
christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in
the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last
throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and
disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things
artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” -- Rachel Carson
“Why
would anyone believe it is possible to lay down such barrage of poisons
on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They
should not be called insecticides, but biocides.” -- Rachel Carson
“The
most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the
contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even
lethal materials.” -- Rachel Carson
“The
'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the
Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that
nature exists for the convenience of man.” -- Rachel Carson
“Only
within the moment of time represented by the present century has one
species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the
world.” -- Rachel Carson
“For
the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now
subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of
conception until death.” -- Rachel Carson
“We
urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of
unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the
risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide
whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only
when in full possession of the facts.” -- Rachel Carson
“We
stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert
Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long
been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we
progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork
of the road-the one "less traveled by"-offers our last, our only chance
to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” -- Rachel Carson
“It
is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose,
should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But
the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the
threat is rather to life itself.” -- Rachel Carson
“A
Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are
going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking
them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know
something about their nature and their power.” -- Rachel Carson
“As
crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been
hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate
and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and
capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary
capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical
control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no
humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.” -- Rachel Carson
“I
sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to
guide him, it is not half so important to 'know' as to 'feel'.” -- Rachel Carson
“Short
version: For the child. . ., it is not half so important to know as to
feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom,
then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil
in which the seeds must grow. . . . It is more important to pave the
way for a child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts that
he is not ready to assimilate.” -- Rachel Carson
“A
child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and
excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed
vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even
lost before we reach adulthood.” -- Rachel Carson
“Over
increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes
unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are
strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird
song.” -- Rachel Carson
“To
the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his
garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer of wild regions,
anything that destroys the wildlife of an area for even a single year
has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. This is
a valid point of view.” -- Rachel Carson
“This
is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is
unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits.” -- Rachel Carson
“The
beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been
uppermost in my mind - that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things
that were being done. . . . Now I can believe I have at least helped a
little.” -- Rachel Carson
“Any
concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted
and untrue, if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather
than on those vast forces not of man's making that shape and channel the
nature and direction of life.” -- Rachel Carson
“But
most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward
drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some
invisible force.” -- Rachel Carson
“I
like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life
past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that
all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand
that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain
future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite
number and variety of separate lives.” -- Rachel Carson
“The
real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth soil,
water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. To utilize them for present
needs while insuring their preservation for future generations requires a
delicately balanced and continuing program, based on the most extensive
research. Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter
of politics.” -- Rachel Carson
“We
have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man;
it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life
came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not
so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow.” -- Rachel Carson
“We
are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation
of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.” -- Rachel Carson
“It
was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed
with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores
of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the
fields and woods and marsh... Even the streams were now lifeless... No
witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this
stricken world. The people had done it themselves...” -- Rachel Carson
“The
aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take
it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction.
It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of
science.” -- Rachel Carson
“Nothing
is wasted in the sea; every particle of material is used over and over
again, first by one creature, then by another. And when in spring the
waters are deeply stirred, the warm bottom water brings to the surface a
rich supply of minerals, ready for use by new forms of life.” -- Rachel Carson
“Have
we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable
that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or
the vision to demand that which is good?” -- Rachel Carson
In B.C. in 2018, First Nations communities celebrated groundbreaking court victories with national implications, won awards for clean energy leadership, and took #reconciliation efforts into their own hands.
Many
of the problems we face today are our own creation. Creating a more
peaceful world requires a peaceful mind and a peaceful heart. As human
brothers and sisters we must live together in tolerance and affection.
