Pilgrimage to Rachel Carson’s Edge of the Sea

Now for something a bit different, and really special. Today we’re off to seaside Maine, in the far north east of the US, to visit Rachel Carson’s summer cottage. Here was where Rachel wrote much of her last few books. It was a place she loved, and where she also soaked up her last days in Maine with best friend Dorothy.

It did feel like something of a pilgrimage, visiting the spirit of the woman who is regarded as pivotal in launching the modern environmental movement, with her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring. A response to her dismay and outrage at the impact of pesticides on human and environmental health, it was written, and then defended, under all sorts of ill-considered industry and bureaucratic attacks, while she herself had become ill with cancer.

She actually wrote plenty of other world-shaping stuff before that too. Rachel was a marine biologist whose best-selling sea trilogy preceded Silent Spring. But it was the latter that met the moment like few books have, and shaped generations. Still.

So it was that after visiting Chloe Maxmin and Bill Pluecker ahead of their wonderful successes in the 2024 elections, we headed off along the Sheepscot River a little south, to the place Rachel built ahead of writing her third sea trilogy book, ‘The Edge of the Sea’. This is where we start. And where we finish? Well, let’s just say there was some magic about that day, back in the Fall of ‘24.

Chapter markers (with accompanying images) & transcript.

Rachel Carson Council.

Robert Musil’s piece on Rachel’s cottage.

Recorded 9 September 2024.

Title image: the magazine cover at the Inn.

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