Rachel Carson’s Maine
Heron eating at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells. Photo: Steve Norris, courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service
By Andrea Lani
Rachel Carson during her career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
WHEN YOU SEE A BALD EAGLE perched in a spruce tree overlooking a tidal estuary, thank Rachel Carson. That a trip to the shore is often rewarded with an eagle sighting can be attributed in large part to Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring. The book sounded the alarm about the dangers to birds, fish, wildlife and humans from widespread use of pesticides and, many argue, it launched the modern environmental movement.
Over the decade from Silent Spring’s publication until use of the pesticide DDT was banned in the United States, Maine’s bald eagle population hovered at an average of 28 breeding pairs per year; today Maine hosts more than 700 breeding pairs, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Bald eagle recovery has been so successful, our nation’s symbol was removed from the list of endangered species in 2007.
Before she became a crusader for restraint in the use of pesticides, however, Carson wrote three books celebrating her true love, the sea—Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. Carson, a Pennsylvania native, first encountered and became enthralled with the ocean and the intertidal zone during a summer internship at Woods Hole in Massachusetts between college and graduate school. She later spent summers in Maine, where she collected many of the experiences and impressions portrayed in the “Rocky Shores” chapter of The Edge of the Sea.
Carson’s legacy is visible all along Maine’s coast, from flourishing bald eagles and other birds to conservation lands named in her honor or preserved through an organization she helped found. We’ve collected a few places where you can discover the enchantment Carson found in Maine’s seashore and celebrate her legacy by taking a hike along a rocky shore, poking around in a tide pool or reading a few pages of one of Carson’s books while sitting on a bench overlooking a salt marsh.
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge
Looking across the marsh at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service
Carson worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its predecessor, the Bureau of Fisheries, from 1935 through 1951 as a biologist, writer and editor. For the agency’s “Conservation in Action” series Carson wrote, “Wild creatures, like men, must have a place to live. As civilization creates cities, builds highways, and drains marshes, it takes away, little by little, the land that is suitable for wildlife…. Refuges resist this trend by saving some areas from encroachment, and by preserving in them, or restoring where necessary, the conditions that wild things need in order to live.”
In 1969, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service renamed the Coastal Maine Wildlife Refuge to honor Carson and her literary and scientific legacy. Established to protect estuary and salt marsh habitats vital to migrating birds, the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge is made up of eleven separate parcels of land, or divisions, that stretch over 50 miles of coastline from Kittery to Portland. Hiking trails at three of the refuge’s divisions provide visitors an opportunity for an up-close look at the birds and wildlife that make the refuge their home. www.fws.gov/refuge/rachel_carson
Cutts Island Trail
Seaport Road, Kittery
A unique aspect of the coastline in southern Maine is the convergence of northern boreal forest, eastern deciduous forest and the seashore. Enjoy this unusual assemblage of habitats as you follow the 1.8-mile round-trip trail through pines and mixed hardwood forests bordering the salt marshes along Chauncey Creek.
The Carson Trail
Route 9, Wells
Pick up a copy of the nature trail brochure before taking this one-mile universal access loop along the edge between forested upland and coastal wetlands. Eleven interpretive sites draw your attention to different aspects of the salt marshes, and overlook points provide great views of Branch Brook, the Merriland River, and the confluence, where the two become the Little River.
Timber Point Trail
Granite Point Road, Biddeford
On your way to the trailhead, stop at one of the pullouts along Granite Point Road, where you can admire the coastal wetlands. From the parking lot at the end of road, follow the 1.5-mile trail along a pebble beach, through a pleasant hardwood grove and spruce forest, and among the buildings of the historic Ewing estate. At low tide you can cross a causeway to Timber Island.
A small island off Hendricks Head on Southport Island, near Carson’s summer home. Photo courtesy of the Boothbay Region Land Trust
Boothbay Region
After Carson’s second book, The Sea Around Us, became a bestselling success, she was able to both leave the Fish and Wildlife Service to pursue writing full-time and purchase property on Southport Island, a triangle of land connected to the Boothbay peninsula by a short bridge. From 1953 until her death in 1964, Carson spent at least part of each summer in the cottage she had built on the shores of the Sheepscot River. Visitors to the Boothbay Area can walk in her footsteps in the woods and along the rocky shore.
Ocean Point Shore Road
East Boothbay
Vast expanses of exposed rock along this headland provide ample opportunities for exploring the intertidal zone and the array of plants and animals that inhabit what Carson called “the enchanted threshold of the sea.” In The Edge of the Sea, Carson describes a “fairy cave” she came across in this area: “when I looked into the cave a little elfin starfish hung down, suspended by the merest thread…. It reached down to touch its own reflection so perfectly delineated that there might have been, not one starfish, but two.” Scramble over the rocks along Ocean Point Walk for about half a mile around the headland for views of the open ocean and nearby islands and, of course, more tide pools.
Boothbay Region Land Trust
Boothbay Peninsula
Take a hike on one of more than twenty preserves on the Boothbay peninsula and nearby islands conserved by the Boothbay Region Land Trust. One of the shortest of the land trust’s 30 miles of trails begins near the public beach on Southport Island, not far from Carson’s summer home. The quarter-mile trail climbs through the mossy spruce forest of Hendrick’s Head Preserve, similar to a “rough path through an evergreen forest that has its own peculiar enchantment” that Carson described in The Edge of the Sea. Paddle to one of the land trust’s island preserves, such as Indiantown Island, which Carson portrayed in the essay, “An Island I Remember,” as “a dark wall of coniferous forest rising in solid, impenetrable blackness to where the tops of the spruces feathered out into a serrate line against the sky.” Preserves in and along the Sheepscot River, on the west side of the peninsula, have been dedicated by the Boothbay Region Land Trust as the Rachel Carson Coastal Greenway in a fitting tribute to the area’s most famous conservationist. www.bbrlt.org/trails-2
Maine State Aquarium
McKown Point Road, West Boothbay Harbor
If you want to meet eye-to-eye with some of the more elusive creatures Carson describes in The Edge of the Sea, like sea anemones and starfish, take a trip to the Maine State Aquarium in West Boothbay. Operated by the Department of Marine Resources and open during the summer months, the aquarium features marine life from the Gulf of Maine. Peer into tanks holding giant lobsters, pet a shark, and revive your sense of wonder as you study sea cucumbers, urchins, scallops and other strange and beautiful ocean creatures up close in the touch tank. www.maine.gov/dmr/education/aquarium
Tidepooling at Salt Pond Preserve. Photo: Andrea Lani
The Nature Conservancy
In 1956, during a meeting with other local conservationists concerned about loss of habitat and development of Maine’s coastline, Carson proposed that the group organize a Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy— “the one group,” she said, “which encourages practical action.” The group agreed and established the fourth Nature Conservancy Field Office, with Carson as the chapter’s honorary chair. Today, the Nature Conservancy manages more than 75 preserves in Maine and has helped conserve more than 1.7 million acres in the state. A number of the organization’s coastal properties include trails and other opportunities for visitors to enjoy the preserves.
Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve
Route 32, New Harbor
“Tide pools,” Carson wrote in The Edge of the Sea, “contain mysterious worlds within their depths, where all the beauty of the sea is subtly suggested and portrayed in miniature.” Visit this enormous tide pool, as Carson often did, at low tide. Wade in the ankle-deep water and peer under the Irish moss to search for crabs, periwinkles, and other creatures of this in-between zone. After you’ve enjoyed what the tide pool has to offer, take a walk along the one-mile hiking trail across the road, which travels through upland spruce forests to a small pond that was once used for harvesting ice.
The Basin Preserve
Basin Road, Phippsburg
Discover the Kennebec Estuary along New Meadows River and The Basin on this preserve’s network of trails, which travel more than 10 miles through pitch pine woodlands, shrub marshes and black spruce bogs.
Berry Woods Preserve
Bay Point Road, Georgetown
The Gamble Trail and Kennebec River Lookout will take you on a 2.6-mile round-trip hike through pine and spruce woods with abundant wild blueberries and along towering granite outcrops, culminating at a large boulder overlooking the Kennebec River. The 1.5-mile Wilson Trail loops along the salt marshes that edge Robinhood Cove.
Lane’s Island Preserve
Indian Creek Causeway, Vinalhaven
Cross the causeway from Vinalhaven to enjoy the rocky shoreline and cobble beaches of this small island preserve.
Crockett Cove Woods Preserve
Fire Road 88, Deer Isle
A self-guided nature trail leads you through the unique features of this coastal forest of fir and spruce, along sphagnum bogs and through bracken fern.
Indian Point Blagden Preserve
Higgins Farm Road, Trenton
Follow any of the preserve’s network of short trails through spruce-fir forest to gravel beaches and rocky outcroppings on the shore of Western Bay.
Great Wass Island Preserve
Black Duck Cove Road, Beals
This preserve protects several rare plants and unique coastal bogs. Take the 2.2-mile Little Cape Point trail through spruce woods and along bogs to the shore at Little Cape Point. Follow the 2.3-mile Mud Hole Trail along pink granite cliffs and cobble beaches.
IN HER WRITING, Carson frequently returned to the theme of geologic time and how our tiny present moment fits into the vast past and future of the earth and the sea. In the final chapter of The Edge of the Sea, which she titled “The Enduring Sea,” she writes:
“On all these shores there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before; of the sea’s eternal rhythms—the tides, the beat of surf, the pressing rivers of the currents…of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean current, from past to unknown future.”
Take yourself to the edge of the sea this summer, be attentive to the eternal rhythms, and appreciate how Rachel Carson’s legacy ensured that vital pieces of Maine’s coastline will endure.
