Part Three begins with Carson’s most successful magazine article, “Our Ever-Changing Shore” from Holiday, and ends with a television script on clouds. Carson had long understood that the same physical forces were at work in the air and on the sea, a similarity that fascinated her.
After leaving the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1952 Rachel Carson bought a cottage on Southport Island, Maine, near Boothbay Harbor, where with her own tide pools and rocky beach she spent the middle years of the decade researching and writing The Edge of the Sea, the final volume in her trilogy on the sea. As with her previous book, it was serialized first in the New Yorker and then appeared on the New York Times best-seller list.
Field research on the Atlantic seashores provided Carson with some of her most creative moments, several of which are reflected in the selections included here from her field notebooks and from her letters to friends. Carson used those field experiences in public speeches during this period to reflect on the primacy of ecological relationships and the value of beauty in the modern world.
Concerned about the dwindling number of America’s seashores, Carson advocated that some must be set aside from human activity. She had been an early advocate of wilderness preservation, but she also dreamed of saving a small tract of land she called “Lost Woods” on Southport Island. Although this ambition was never achieved, Carson left a written legacy of her advocacy for this and for the ecological importance of life in the marginal world.