On a Farther Shore by William Souder Read Free Book Online

earlier organisms, although noone could answer how life had arisen in the first place. Carson learned these lessons well, as evolutionary theory would later be central to her writing about the sea.
    Skinker taught that all life was interconnected, and seen in the light of evolution this meant, as Carson came to realize, that every day in the world offered evidence of all the years of the world that had come before. Skinker naturally saw extinction as an inevitable aspect of evolution, and she was alert to the fact that human carelessness about the environment could sometimes hasten the disappearance of species that might not otherwise be endangered. This holistic view of the living world—and our place in it—was already being called “ecology,” though the term wasn’t yet in common use and didn’t figure in Skinker’s teaching as an identifiable discipline.
    The prospects for anyone determined to live as a writer were then—as now—uncertain. But for a woman, a career in science was an even more daunting undertaking. Women had a hard time earning advanced degrees in science, and those who did often ended up teaching at women’s colleges that—like PCW—had limited programs that perpetuated the underrepresentation of women in science.In 1925, the National Academy of Sciences—America’s most elite scientific organization—elected its first-ever woman member when Florence Rena Sabin, a physiologist from Johns Hopkins, joined the 229 men in the group.Even the gifted Miss Skinker had gotten only as far as a master’s degree from Columbia and now spent much of her time arguing for more rigorous academic standards at PCW while dreaming of perhaps one day earning her doctorate.
    Carson, who never seemed to consider the advantages or disadvantages of any career choice, continued to write.She worked as a reporter for the
Arrow
, a twice-monthly campus magazine. In the spring of her sophomore year, she won a prize for a short story called “Broken Lamps,” a dark, formulaic tale about a young civil engineer disenchanted with his life and his wife, but who is redeemed whenthe wife suddenly falls desperately ill, causing him to see that he truly loves her.In 1928 she published a fine—if dubiously spelled—poem in the
Arrow
:
    March
    I know a marsh-girt hill where brown paths cross
    And intermingle till they touch the sky
.
    There troops of shadows pitch their tents among
    The thorn trees, guant [
sic
] and gnarled before the blast
.
    In sombre [
sic
] dun and green the moss entwines
    Slow figures on the crags that face the dawn
,
    Where wind-tossed geese in shadow squadron sail
,
    And beat their wings against the foam-flecked sky
.
    But by then, Carson had fallen under Miss Skinker’s spell.One night in the lab, Carson confessed to a friend that she’d begun to think about how to merge her two interests. “I have always wanted to write,” Carson said, “but I don’t have much imagination. Biology has given me something to write about.”In late February 1928, Carson told Skinker she was going to declare biology as her new major. Skinker was shocked, and insisted on discussing the decision at length, though in the end, as Carson told a friend, she’d been a “peach” about it.
    There’d been a heavy snowfall the weekend before, and that night, with Orion ablaze in the black sky above, the girls of PCW had a sledding party—mostly on aluminum trays liberated from the dining hall.Carson and another girl riding together on one breakneck downhill run hit a bump that pitched them off and sent them tumbling through clouds of snow. Their knickers and sweaters soaked, the girls finally came in, showered, and then, dressed in pajamas, sat before the enormous fireplace in Woodland Hall, eating sandwiches and potato salad. Then they turned off the lights and by the firelight sang songs until the clock on the mantel chimed midnight. Carson was deliriously happy.
    Carson and another girl in biology started privately