In Wonder of the Earth

A Review of Renowned Ecologist Rachel Carson's The Sense of Wonder

Sep 27, 2009

In her book The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson advocates the importance of raising a child with an acceptance of and an appreciation for their environment.

During her lifetime, Rachel Carson, renowned ecologist and one of the catalysts of America’s environmentalist movement, harbored the conviction that the quality and sanctity of life is profoundly tied to a human being’s connection to the natural world. In her book The Sense of Wonder, she writes that if she were to grant all children one gift at birth, it would be “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength” (Carson, 42).

Cultivating a Sense of Wonder

The human "sense of wonder" is an internal fire that needs tending. Carson urges that sensitivity to natural beauty must be awakened, nourished and stimulated in the formative years by a caring adult who will take a child by the hand and enjoy a walk through nature alongside them. She recounts time spent with her own nephew during his childhood, enjoying the outdoors together both in calm and in storm. The child's encounters with the wild beauty of creation from a tender age nurtured him more deeply than a strictly practical rearing might have allowed.

Rachel Carson decries some parents’ tendency to deny their children access to nature simply because certain outings “are inconvenient, interfering with bedtime, or involving wet clothing…or mud” (Carson, 22). To deny oneself the multi-sensory experiences that nature offers is, in the author’s estimation, to cut oneself off from life-giving forces of the earth.

The Romance of Nature

With a gentle but firm admonition that people must pursue their lost romance with wilderness, Carson takes her readers - presumably parents- by the hand, and shows them what enjoying nature means. She insists it does not require an encyclopedic knowledge of the genus and species of everything encountered. Questioning is often more important than acquiring right answers, says Carson. “It is not half so important to know as to feel…once the emotions have been aroused—a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown…then we wish for the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning” (Carson, 45 & 49). To orient a child toward such discoveries, one must be willing to become child-like themselves, exploring the world with every pore as if using their five senses for the first time.

Opportunity in Urbanity's Midst

If idealistic, Carson is also practical. She points out that those entrenched in the urban lifestyle can still enjoy the elements of wind and rain, the beauty of a bright or night sky. Luckily, there are still ways of returning to nature even if city-dwellers have been distanced from it. According to the author, the real tragedy is the fact that people do not recognize the opportunities before them. She relates a night of stargazing in which she realized that because stars are present so many nights of the year, most people will never behold them, simply because they could anytime they wanted.

If Carson’s concern for a society slipping out of touch with the organic side of life was timely in the 1950s when she wrote The Sense of Wonder, it is all the more applicable now, on the other side of the environmentalist movement, when light pollution alone is so rampant that city-dwellers can scarcely see the stars in their night skies. Her book is a classic treatise, charging humanity with the responsibility of treasuring what it has been given. Wisely, Rachel Carson understood this sixth sense--wonder--to be as important as the original five, and an inheritance we should endow to our children from their earliest awareness.

Why Not Also Introduce Your Child to the Life and Legacy of Ecologist Rachel Carson?

Discover the 2005 Teacher's Choice Award-winning book Rachel Carson: Preserving a Sense of Wonder by author Joseph Bruchac and illustrator Thomas Locker at www.fulcrum-books.com.

The copyright of the article In Wonder of the Earth in Reference Books is owned by Katelyn Aronson. Permission to republish In Wonder of the Earth in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.