Blue and Green

The Colloquium following our time on the Alternative Fall Break was tonight. I was highly impressed by all of the presentations from fellow Ship students. I find it interesting that everyone brought back different perspectives and applications from the same experience. Everybody was able to synthesize information and apply findings to their own interests and specialities. You know that a cause is special and important when so many people can be positively affected in so many different ways!

I myself am an English major and thought it would be impossible to find anything on Wallops Island that I could bring back that related to my major. I was wrong! I was personally inspired by activities that we participated in on the Fall Break. In addition, I am also inspired by the legacy that Rachel Carson has left us. I would like to leave you with the poem that I wrote about her life and our call to action.


Blue and Green: A Tribute to Rachel Carson

She walks with the glow of tree-filtered sun in her eyes
Dancing black shapes in the windy breeze
Printing dark colors on those irises that would
See the world and long to keep it blue and green.

She wrote words of report, elevated into poetry
The world she saw made her believe.
Science intrigued her, beauty inspired.

Her treacherous truths lingered in public eyes.
Whispered words they were; to not be deceived.
Pesticides kill and nature recedes.

Silent Springs ruptures silent dreams
When earth coddles degradation.
Man is echoing, echoing, echoing in his trail,
And only Rachel hears reverberations.

The sea wraps her silky fingers around our plantetal bodies. Affectation. An all consuming tide. The sea washes her silent words over our cold hearts and sustains our landly trysts. She pushes and pulls and makes us whole, but we never say thanks.

Waters flow in Rachel’s eyes, blurring that gaze
That saw blackness pooling on our belovéd oceans
Polluting the beauty and truth we once knew.
One good conscience crying for generations forward

Rachel spoke for the currents.
For the earth.
For us.
Of the sea and all around us.
Mustn’t we say thanks?

Earth reflecting in her gentle eyes
Closed before nature was redeemed.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy....

The Environmental Sociology class is anticipating the trip and wondering what adventures are before us. We hope that our field notes will be inspired by the memories of Rachel Carson and C. Wright Mills, both of whom were pioneers in their field and understood the intersection between science, the soul, and activism. Each student in the class will contribute their thoughts to this thread: their hopes for the trip and their worries - before we begin. As Carson wrote in the first page of The Sea Around Us , "Beginnings are apt to be shadowy...." And so it is with the beginning of our adventure.