Santa Rosa Beach, Fla.
Marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson has written extensively about the role of nature and wonder in our “spiritual development.” By nature, she refers not only to those vast mountains and oceans but also to small woodlands that provide peace and solitude and enable us to experience wonder, that feeling of being one with nature.
“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement,” Carson writes in an essay, The Sense of Wonder (1956). She laments “for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.” To maintain that “sense of wonder,” a child needs adults who can share curiosity, joy and amazement and encourage wonder.
Some of us are fortunate to have a childhood filled with curious adults, who provided time and opportunity to wonder, whether against the backdrop of early morning birdsongs, night skies filled with stars, the ebb flow of the tides or migrating birds.
Growing up in Virginia, our parents stressed the importance of outdoor play in nature. My sister and I built forts in trees or under shrubs. We chased lightning bugs and butterflies. My sister recounts the times in our yard:
“I used to lift up the rocks in the backyard in that little rock garden, and underneath there were some glistening striped salamanders. I always liked how they looked so oily and kind of smug and complacent in their little damp places under the rock.”
On summer vacations on Florida’s pristine Gulf Coast, we swam to sandbars, watched coquinas disappear in the sand when waves receded and tiny sand crabs scurry down into holes, out of reach of swooping gulls. In the heat of the day, we visited a local library, gathering information about our treasures from the sea.
In an essay on science and wonder in her monthly newsletter “The Marginalian,” Maria Popova describes that sense of wonder and “childhood spirit” that underlies discoveries.
My interest has been with those 17th-century natural philosophers at the advent of the Scientific Revolution, a time when obstacles like censorship and the Inquisition, lack of pedigree and even being a woman could jeopardize your credibility and lead to threats against your life!
Despite the risks at that time, wonder led many to make great discoveries.
What sense of wonder led Italian Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
to make his first telescopic observations of 1610—the pitted lunar surface, four
moons of Jupiter and the multitude of stars in the Milky Way--that brought into
question the traditional worldview of a finite world, with one center of rotation
and immutable heavenly bodies.
Or the French magistrate and natural philosopher Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) to demonstrate that the “rains of blood,” thought to be a presage, were related to the emergency of butterflies? Or to make the first observations of the Orion nebula? Or German naturalist and illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) to describe and illustrate the metamorphosis of insects?
But these days, do we take time for wonder in nature, given scheduled activities and “screen time”? Furthermore, many of these once pristine woodlands and waterways have disappeared, replaced with man-made artifices— high rises, developments and highways—labeled by some bureaucrats as “symbols of progress.” We have less space and fewer opportunities for contemplation and wonder. As a New York Times editorial writer, cited by Carson in a 1955 keynote address, reminds us, “The gift of tranquility, wherever found, is beyond price.”
Psychologists and medical professionals attest to the value of spending time in nature and experiencing that sense wonder. It leads to more compassion for others, more responsibility for our planet and provides countless physiological benefits.
How are you making time for wonder whether near the mountains or at the sea? Or at other locations?
Old Rag, Blue Ridge Mountains, Sperryville, Va.
Big Cypress National Preserve, near the Everglades, Fla.
Works Cited
Carson, Rachel. “The Sense of Wonder.” 1956.
Carson, Rachel. “Speech to the sorority of women journalists, Theta Sigma Phi.” 1954.
Popova, Maria. “From Galileo to Sagan, Famous Scientists on the Art of Wonder, the Mystery of the Universe, and the Heart of Science.” The Marginalian. 2014. https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/24/science-wonder/. See also Popova’s other newsletters.
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