Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Rachel Carson and Bob Hines conduct field work in the Florida Keys.  Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The DEL program welcomed a new class of mid-career Masters students to Durham during a heat wave in late August.   Excited classmates introduced themselves, toured campus, and discussed their passions in environmental science, policy, and management.  So although the calendar labels this the Fall term, it was really more like Spring, with a flurry of new faces and activity here on Duke’s campus.

Incoming DEL-MEM students might wonder, “How will two years of study improve our ability to affect change?”  Leadership mentors like Dr. Deb Gallagher and Don Wells advise that leadership is a journey with a destination that constantly changes.  Along the way, successful leaders have a way of striking a chord with individuals and inspiring them to action.  Indeed, human rights movements define benchmarks and progress through leaders like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who rallied thousands in organized marches or non-violent protest with their fiery words.  By contrast, contemporary environmental leadership is most often attributed to a biologist and a writer named Rachel Carson.  Her call to arms was Silent Spring, a book that warned of the dangers of pesticide use for wildlife, natural resources, and also to humans.  Battles were initially fought in book clubs, editorial columns, and even cocktail parties.  A different style of leadership for sure.

I was an undergraduate geology/environmental studies major when I first read Silent Spring and learned the basics about Rachel Carson’s life story.  I remember thinking I had just finished the book responsible for a public awakening to environmental issues, but I wasn’t inspired to actions of my own.  Not yet.

One characteristic of a great leader is persistent relevance.  Time passed and I became a K-12 educator in a small coastal town of Beaufort, NC.  My organization offered field trips to the Rachel Carson Reserve, a group of shoals, dunes, and marshes proximate to town.  I learned that before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, she was one of the first females hired into a technical position in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and that she had conducted field work in those same marshes observing horseshoe crabs, nesting shorebirds, and a sea of marsh grasses driving the productivity of the system.  Just like me and the thousands of students who have visited those marshes, Rachel Carson also loved the sea and its creatures.  The reserve was named in tribute, and serves as an active and potent education tool.  Rachel Carson was here!  These were the animals she protected with her words.  Finally, Silent Spring’s protagonists had a face, a pulse, and a home.  I could no longer applaud from a distance.  I had to take part in telling her story.

feature_teaching at R carson

The DEL students and staff walk in Rachel Carson’s footsteps on the tidal flats near Beaufort, NC in August 2013.

Fast forward to last month.  I’m riding on a bus from Durham to Beaufort with the first year DEL-MEM students, listening as they discuss William Souder’s book On a Farther Shore, published in 2012 on the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring.  Students wondered aloud if she was somewhat of a reluctant leader, someone who would rather study and write while others called the banners the way King and Gandhi did.  I was lucky enough to talk with the author himself.  Mr. Souder agreed that although Rachel Carson enjoyed being a beloved, even famous writer, she was not drawn to celebrity or to inspire with actions.  She wrote out of a sense of obligation or duty and probably did not even consider herself an environmental leader at the time.  I revisit the Rachel Carson Reserve again, and find that even environmental professionals with years of experience find inspiration and awe walking in the footsteps of a woman who studied here, albeit briefly, nearly 75 years ago.  As the DEL-MEMs go forward with their studies, and as we tackle increasingly complex, even wicked, environmental issues, Rachel Carson’s words remain relevant and potent.  In 50 years, our spring has not turned silent…not even under the midday sun in August.

 

Written by Allison Besch, DEL Executive Education staff