Aug
3
By Paolo von Schirach
August 3, 2012
WASHINGTON – One of the joys of living in the Wesley Heights neighborhood in Washington, DC is that it is a very green area. Lots of trees all around, and birds ans squirrels. And we are also very close to a stretch of the Glover Archbold Park. Just a few minutes walk from my home there is a point of access to the trail. I walk for a few minutes and I am in the middle of a forest. A real forest, in the North West quadrant of Washington, DC, running north to south, ending up next to Canal Road, near Georgetown University.
Glover Archbold Park
Along the trail you see others walking, many joggers and several people walking their dogs. All in all very beautiful and relaxing. Lots of birds, deer and a small stream. Even in the intense heat of the Washington summer it is always noticeably cooler in the park.
But now I discovered that there is more about Glover Park. The NorthWest Current, a local Washington, DC publication, recently reported that there is an initiative, supported by Eleanor Holmes Norton, the DC Delegate to the Congress, to rename the park’s trail after Rachel Carson, the famous biologist and conservationist whose 1962 best seller Silent Spring brought national attention to the negative consequences of pesticides –especially DDT– on many species, (even though DDT was useful in the fight against malaria).
Carson’s book and her reputation as a great nature writer, (she had written other acclaimed books on sea life), is considered a key milestone in the creation of the environmental movement in the United States. Her passionate writing about nature greatly influenced American public opinion. This led, among other things, to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) and to the passing of The Clean Air Act.
Rachel Carson Nature Trail
But why renaming this trail in a Washington, DC park after Rachel Carson? Well, it turns out that Ms. Carson used to live in the Washington area (she worked for the Federal Government) and that she liked to walk in Glover Park. Apparently some of the material later included in Silent Spring originated during her frequent walks on the Glover Park trail.
And so, if all goes well, the park’s trail will be soon renamed Rachel Carson Nature Trail. And so now I know that I and many others enjoy the same scenery observed by this famous and passionate nature lover.
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