There is a film coming to Whidbey Island that’s a must-see for anyone passionate about nature.
The documentary-style feature entitled “A Sense of Wonder” is being screened at community gatherings in a 150-city tour nationwide and will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 27 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation church in Freeland.
The story revolves around the life of scientist and pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson, the author of the highly controversial bestseller “Silent Spring.” The book detailed the devastation from DDT, a heavily-used pesticide, and meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and human beings, causing cancer and genetic damage.
A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects for weeks and months, and not only the targeted insects but countless other living things. Its toxicity pervaded the environment even after it was diluted by rainwater.
Carson concluded that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed birds and animals and had contaminated the entire world food supply.
The book’s most haunting and famous chapter, “A Fable for Tomorrow,” depicted a nameless American town where all life — from fish to birds to apple blossoms to children — had been “silenced” by the insidious effects of DDT.
After the book came out in 1962, the backlash from Carson’s critics thrust her into the center of a political upheaval.
Carson’s convictions and her foresight on the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role, a difficult thing for someone who cherished her privacy.
Actor Kaiulani Lee, who played the role of Carson onstage for 15 years, fully embodies her extraordinary character in “A Sense of Wonder,” which depicts the author and activist in the final year of her life at age 56.
Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government and the press as she focused her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people.
The film is an intimate reflection of Carson’s life as she emerged as America’s most successful advocate for the natural world.
In a 1963 broadcast of the television series “CBS Reports,” Carson summed up her message of the human responsibility to the earth.
“We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature,” Carson said.
“Now, I truly believe, that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”
The film captures Carson as literary writer, marine biologist and tireless advocate for the natural world.
“A Sense of Wonder” was shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler and directed by Christopher Monger at Carson’s cottage on the coast of Maine.
The film is 50 minutes in length and admission is by donation.
For more on the film, click here.
