Silent Spring

“The earth’s vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and animals. Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and place.”

from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson pg. 64

Silent Spring

“It is not possible to add pesticides to water anywhere without threatening the purity of water everywhere. Seldom if ever does Nature operate in closed and separate compartments, and she has not done so in distributing the earth’s water supply.”

from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson pg. 42

A Grief Observed

“At first I was very afraid of going to places where H. and I had been happy – our favourite pub, our favourite wood. But I decided to do it at once – like sending a pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash. Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It’s not local at all. I suppose if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn’t notice it much more in any one food than another. Eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal. I is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

from A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis