Alpaca Kate

“The obligation to endure gives us the right to know."

Jean Rostand, French writer and biologist

I am blessed to be able to spend my summers in a small cottage-park on the coast of southern Maine.

In past years, the screen-porch was my office. It was the place in which I wrote business plans, conducted conference calls and team meetings, answered 80 or more e-mails a day – all while listening to the love-song of a male house wren who nested down with his ladybird in a planter on our porch.  Summer of 2009 finds me in “early retirement”, quietly enjoying this same space, knitting or spinning, reading or writing in my own time, for my own pleasure.

The Maine shore and several miles of beautiful, walk-able Wells Beach are 1.1 miles from my little home.  But between the beach and my summer castle is, perhaps, one of the loveliest stretches of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Preserve.

A little background and history about the Preserve.  By the 1500’s, traders and fishermen were using the Wells beaches regularly for access to and between early settlements. These barrier beaches were described in deeds as “seawalls”, and were the main “wall”, protecting the marshes from the waters of the Atlantic.  The value of the marsh hay with its high mineral content was critical to the survival of the settlers’ livestock, and Wells, which had been blessed with ample marshes, had a head start in building and maintaining a successful settlement. 

Fast-forward 200 years. In an effort to protect coastal salt marshes as estuaries for thousands of migratory birds, the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Preserve was established in 1966, in an agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the State of Maine.  Ten tracts of land, consisting of over 9000 acres, scattered along 50 miles of coastline between Kittery and Cape Elizabeth, Maine were designated as “protected” under state and federal law.

I’d invite visitors to Southern Maine to turn a bit inland of an afternoon to explore the riches of this special place on the coast.  Rachel Carson’s book, “The Sense of Wonder”, photo-illustrated and published posthumously, was originally written as a 1950’s magazine article entitled, “Help Your Child to Wonder”. In the piece, Carsonoutlines her philosophy that, as adults, we must nurture a child’s inborn sense of wonder about the world around us.  

Sounds like a good family afternoon to me.

The beaches of Southern Maine are awesome indeed, but don’t forget check out the beauty and majesty of nature in the tidal pools and salt marshes, too.  Here are a couple of great places to get started:

http://www.fws.gov/northeast/gulfofmaine/

http://www.fws.gov/northeast/rachelcarson/

Laudholm Farm, Wells, Maine

http://www.wellsreserve.org/

Rachel Carson Writes About Wildlife Refuges*

“If you travel much in the wilder sections of our country, sooner or later you are likely to meet the sign of the flying goose — the emblem of the national wildlife refuges.

You may meet it by the side of a road crossing miles of flat prairie in the Middle West, or in the hot deserts of the Southwest. You may meet it by some mountain lake, or as you push your boat through the winding salty creeks of a coastal march. Wherever you meet this sign, respect it. It means that the land behind the sign has been dedicated by the American people to preserving, for themselves and their children, as much of our native wildlife as can be retained along with our modern civilization. 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. And as their space for living dwindles, the wildlife populations themselves decline. 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.”

— Rachel Carson                              

*This essay introduced the series, "Conservation in Action," a marvelously written collection of narratives about refuges and the refuge system. When she wrote this, Rachel Carson was a scientist and the chief editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.