A HISTORIAN'S COAST 



Rachel Carson at Bird Shoal 



L 



By David Cecelski 



enjoy chaperoning school trips 

 to Bird Shoal, a marshy island near 

 Beaufort. The kids are excited to learn 

 outdoors. They scurry among the tidal 

 pools, pelting their teachers with 

 dozens of questions about seashore 

 life. Amid the clamor, I am reminded 

 of a quiet, solitary young woman who 

 waded those tidal pools half a century 

 before us. 



Long before she was famous, 

 Rachel Carson visited Bird Shoal. Her 

 best-selling books about the sea lay 

 years ahead of her. She had not yet 

 dreamed of changing history with 

 "Silent Spring," her trailblazing 

 expose on the dangers of DDT and 

 other pesticides. At Bird Shoal, she 

 was an obscure young biologist 

 discovering the mysteries of the sea. 

 She wandered the island in peace, 

 ankle-deep in marsh mud and en- 

 tranced by the beauty of whelks and 

 sea anemones. 



It is fitting that the Rachel Carson 

 National Estuarine Research Reserve, 

 which today includes Bird Shoal, 

 bears this shy, soft-spoken biologist's 

 name — and not only because she 

 wrote such wonderful books about the 

 sea's ecology. Carson had a special 

 fondness for the North Carolina coast. 

 She visited Bird Shoal frequently and 

 kept a special place in her heart for 

 Lake Mattamuskeet. 



Imagining Carson at Bird Shoal, 

 I have often wondered how a woman 

 so private, and so absorbed in scien- 

 tific study, came to write one of the 

 boldest indictments of humanity's 

 mistreatment of the Earth. But looking 

 more closely at her coastal sojourns 

 here in North Carolina, I think that we 

 can glimpse the inspiration for "Silent 

 Spring." 



Carson was born in 1907 in the 

 Allegheny Valley of Pennsylvania. 

 Encouraged in her love of the out- 

 doors by her mother, she studied 

 marine biology at Johns Hopkins and 

 the Woods Hole Marine Laboratory. 

 Until she could make a living as a 

 writer in 1 952, she worked as an 

 aquatic biologist and editor for the 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 



I do not know exactly when 

 Carson first visited the North Carolina 

 coast, but she had certainly explored 

 the Beaufort vicinity by 1940. Her 

 first book, "Under the Sea- Wind," 

 was published in the fall of 1941 and 

 opened with a long evocation of a 

 May evening at Beaufort's Town 

 Marsh and Bird Shoal. 



Carson's prose brings that spring 

 night to life. Shad burst through 

 Beaufort Inlet. A black skimmer 

 rested after a long flight from the 

 Yucatan. Newborn diamondback 

 terrapins slipped into the dark waters 

 of Back Sound. And — in a passage 



that I have remembered since I first 

 read it as a teen-ager — a marsh rat 

 caught "the scent of terrapin and 

 terrapin eggs, fresh laid, (that) was 

 heavy in the air." The rat devoured 

 one of the eggs, then, blinded by 

 gluttony, was speared by a blue 

 heron. 



In "Under the Sea- Wind," Carson 

 displayed the literary grace and 

 scientific accuracy that marked all her 

 writing. Overlooked in the upheaval 

 of World War II, however, the book 

 received little attention and sold 

 poorly. Not until 10 years later, after 

 "The Edge of the Sea" was published 

 to great acclaim, did Carson's first 

 book also become a best seller. 



Soon after World War II, Carson 

 toured Lake Mattamuskeet to prepare 

 a booklet called "Mattamuskeet: A 

 National Wildlife Refuge." Purchased 

 by the federal government in 1934 for 

 a waterfowl sanctuary, Lake 

 Mattamuskeet attracted one of the 

 largest assemblies of Canada geese 

 and whistling swans on the Atlantic 

 Seaboard. Between 40.000 and 

 60,000 Canadas and 5,000 to 10,000 

 swans wintered on the lake, as well as 

 great flocks of pintails, wigeons, 

 black ducks, mallards and green- and 

 blue-winged teal. 



When visiting Lake Matta- 

 muskeet, Carson stayed at the old 

 pumping station at New Holland. 

 The pumps had been used in a failed 

 plan to drain and farm the lake in the 

 1920s. The Civilian Conservation 

 Corps, a New Deal agency, converted 

 the station into a hunting lodge with 

 a circular staircase ascending the old 

 smokestack 120 feet to an observation 

 tower. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 21 



