In this modest home in Silver Spring, Maryland, science writer Rachel Carson wrote her groundbreaking book on pesticides, Silent Spring. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the book’s publication, which inspired the environmental movement that ultimately led to a ban on DDT and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Photo courtesy of Rachel Carson Landmark Alliance

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Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

—Rachel Carson

This year marks the 60^th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, writer Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book about the devastating effects of pesticides on the environment.

Largely as a result of that book, which she wrote at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, and her activism in the remaining months until her death, she is remembered as a founder of the environmental movement in the United States.

Prior to Silent Spring, Carson was primarily known as a marine biologist and award-winning writer of books and documentaries about the ocean. Her book The Sea Around Us won the 1952 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and earned her admirers throughout the country.

A lifelong writer

Born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania, Carson enjoyed exploring the outdoors and writing. She published her first story at age 10.

She graduated from what is now Chatham College outside Pittsburgh, then attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins, earning a master’s degree in zoology in 1932.

She then began a long career as a writer and editor at what is now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In her spare time, Carson published articles about the ocean in the Atlantic Monthly and about the Chesapeake Bay’s polluted oyster beds in the Baltimore Sun.

Concerned for decades about the toxic chemicals that state and federal government routinely sprayed on public and private property, Carson one day received a letter from a suburban Boston housewife asking, “Where have all my robins gone?”

The letter, along with the encouragement of E.B. White, her editor at The New Yorker magazine (and the author of Charlotte’s Web), inspired her to write a book about pesticides.

“We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge,” she wrote in Silent Spring.

Carson’s book, and the three-part series she published in The New Yorker based on her research, caused a stir throughout America — from the suburbs to the chemical industry.

Carson testified before a Senate committee on the overuse of synthetic pesticides months after the book’s publication. The environmental movement was growing, and Carson became one of its primary voices.

By then, however, Carson was suffering from breast cancer that had spread to her liver. She retreated to her home, which she shared with her adopted son, and died there in April 1964, at age 56.

Six years after her death, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was established. Two years later, the EPA banned DDT, one of the pesticides Carson had called attention to.

Home a national landmark

In 1996, her home was purchased by Diana Post and her husband, Cliff Hall, and declared a National Historic Landmark. Post is the executive director of the Rachel Carson Landmark Association, and the couple opens the home to the public occasionally, receiving about 300 visitors each year.

“Some of the people who come in have quite an emotional reaction,” said Post. Last September, for instance, a family stopped by the house for a mini-tour.

“The girl reminded me of Rachel Carson; she was maybe 13 and reserved, poised and thoughtful. And the boy…was like 17 crickets, the way he was jumping around.”

“The grandmother wrote to us and said they never stopped talking about Rachel Carson that night. Rachel still has a power to inspire even young children and people of all ages,” Post said.

Montgomery History (formerly the Montgomery County Historical Society) offers its members “enormously popular” tours of the Rachel Carson House, located on Berwick Road, according to its executive director, Matthew Logan.

Although an annual open house is held in May, the month of Carson’s birthday, this year the home will open to the public in September to coincide with the original publication date of Silent Spring.

Several schools, parks and trails in the D.C. area are named after Carson, including an elementary school in Gaithersburg, a hiking trail in Silver Spring, and a 650-acre park in Brookeville, Maryland. A middle school in Herndon, Virginia, also carries her name.

Inspiring the next generation

In another of Carson’s books, Sense of Wonder, she encouraged parents and grandparents to spark a love of nature in children, just as her mother did for her.

To that end, Post’s group holds an annual Intergenerational “Sense of Wonder, Sense of the Wild” contest, inviting children and their parents or teachers to write poems and essays about nature.

“They have to consult with older people, and that’s one of the great benefits because the children say, ‘I’m so glad I had time to talk with my mom or my grandmother about this,’” Post said. “They see the world through Rachel Carson’s eyes.”

The contest, initially launched and overseen by the EPA, selects six winners from entries from 18 states and countries as far away as South Korea.

“One of the most beautiful entries was from a 16-year-old girl and her mom who went along the Billy Goat Trail [near the C&O Canal in Potomac, Md.] to get their cardio,” Post said. “She wrote about how the [Potomac] river spoke to her…how vulnerable the river was to our human carelessness.”

Connecting with younger people in the scientific community is part of the mission of the Rachel Carson Council, formed in 1965 by the writer’s friends and colleagues. In addition to working with policymakers on Capitol Hill, the council links 57 colleges with its campus network.

That focus on the future is critical, said Robert K. Musil, president and CEO of the Council.

“Because I’m now a mature citizen, I want to use the Council and its network on campuses to find the next generation of Rachel Carsons and Sylvia Earles that we’re going to need,” Musil said.

“I’m optimistic that there continues to be growing awareness, action and involvement by a broad swath of the public that is now concerned about climate change, environmental justice and other issues.”

Power of average people

Carson suggested that average people who were concerned about chemicals should form “citizen’s brigades” to prevent companies and governments from dousing private land with pesticides.

In Maryland in 2013, a group of parents did just that. Takoma Park mothers Julie Taddeo and her neighbor, Catherine Cummings, were concerned to see many yellow flags on grass, indicating pesticide application.

“We would see them throughout the county — at parks, at doctor’s offices. Yellow flags everywhere. It was shocking,” said Taddeo, a literature professor at the University of Maryland.

“The schools, playgrounds, HOAs were just being bombarded by these pesticides every spring.”

So, Taddeo and Cummings formed a group called Safe Grow Montgomery, and in 2014 convinced the local city council to vote to ban pesticides for cosmetic use on public and private property in Takoma Park.

The Safe Grow Act allows homeowners to use certain pesticides on gardens and weeds, but outlaws those that are known or likely to cause cancer, endocrine disruption and other illnesses.

Several years later, Montgomery County passed a similar law, the Healthy Lawns Act, as have Portland, Maine and several other towns.

Have the laws widely changed behavior? According to Taddeo, parks and fields are still routinely sprayed with chemicals, some of which are “linked to all sorts of illnesses from infertility to cancer to diabetes.”

Still, Taddeo said, their efforts were worth it, if only to make people aware of the dangers of pesticides. “I hope [Rachel Carson] would be proud. We certainly took inspiration from her.”

Hope for the future

Like Taddeo, Musil believes that every effort to preserve a local pond or protect pollinators (bees, birds and other creatures that help pollinate plants) can make a difference.

Musil, who describes himself as a “happy worrier,” said he’s “cautiously optimistic” about the future of the planet.

“The earth is not going to end. The human species is not going to disappear. Will my grandchildren face a more difficult, turbulent time? Yes.”

Instead of despairing, he suggested, get involved — clean up a nearby creek, for instance, or give money to a group like the Sierra Club.

“People who take action, however slight the difference, we can say we were there. We tried. We were in the arena. That leads to people being more engaged and happy.”

“You may not be able to save everybody and everything, but you can do your best.”