The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson

This week we discussed a beautiful book by Rachel Carson: The Sense of Wonder. The text was originally written as a magazine article in the 1950's called "Help Your Child to Wonder". It describes the outdoor adventures she shared with her young nephew and speaks of the need for adults to nurture a child's sense of wonder about the natural world. She wanted to expand the article into a lavishly photo-illustrated book, and the project was completed by others after her death. There are at least two editions of the book, each with a different set of nature photographs.

Carson's touching stories of small moments of simple wonder--watching the waves and stars with her nephew, looking through a magnifying glass at nature's amazing complexities--prompted many similar stories in our discussion. We shared tales of being entranced by the stars, the northern lights, a walk in the woods, a thicket of ferns, and fossils found like treasure in a river bed. We talked of the adults who had shared their love of nature with us as children. We also spoke of the children we have shared our own sense of wonder with--sometimes successfully, sometimes not. We wondered if every child is innately fascinated by nature if they have positive experiences with it early on, or if some are just not very attuned to it.

We tried to define the sense of wonder for ourselves, and described a feeling of awe, or peace, or beauty; a spiritual feeling; a re-focusing; a sense that we are very small in a vast and amazing world. In contrast, people described rushing, stress, responsibility, and a task-oriented mindset as tending to steal away the sense of wonder. When someone asked if we ever felt that feeling of wonder from things that are human-made, people mentioned art, architechture, and music. Yet one participant said that even though a bridge is beautiful and amazing, and that she has no idea how such a thing is built, someone knows and she could find out too. For her, that reduces the sense of wonder. There seems to be something important about not knowing or being able to know; about the fact that no one knows how to make a mountain or create the intricate patterns of a turtle's shell, yet here they are. Perhaps in wonder we return to the childlike state where the world unfolds magically before us without our trying.

There were many other points and stories and digressions; I wish I could write about them all! Feel free to leave your own thoughts here. If the comment box is not displayed below, click where it says "0 comments" (or 1 comment, or whatever we have). Below the comment box, there is a drop-down box that says "comment as:" The easiest thing to do is select 'anonymous'--no more info needed. But if you have any of the accounts they list (Google, AIM, etc), select it and enter in the info requested. If you don't have one of the listed accounts, but do have a personal web page such as a profile on Facebook, you can select Name/URL. Type in your name and paste in the URL of your profile page or whatever web page you want to use.

That's it! Thanks to all who attended, it was a great discussion. For our February meeting we will discuss critiques of Environmental Education: Beyond Ecophobia by David Sobel, and The Failure of Environmental Education (and how we can fix it) by Daniel T. Blumstein and Charlie Saylan. We also provide a watershed lesson plan we found online as an example to discuss. Our March book is The Swamp by Michael Grunwald. See sidebar for schedule.


Happy reading!

July Lewis