The southern tip of the Outer Banks is Beaufort, North Carolina, named Fishtown in the 1600s, a quaint, beautiful coastal town with gorgeous views. It features the smell of salty air, the sounds of waves crashing the shorelines, and the seasonal school of whales coming through the Beaufort Inlet, a channel leading south to the Atlantic Ocean. A peaceful, slow pace of life with Bahamian and West Indian-style homes runs through Beaufort, which has more than 150 historic homes on the National Historic Places.
“It’s easy to fall in love with my hometown. Everyone greets everyone. It’s just our Southern charm and hospitality,” says Kim Lambert, our environmental justice coordinator.
Famed conservationist Rachel Carson did fall in love with Beaufort.
Lambert continues her story: “As a child, unbeknown to me at the time, was Rachel Carson – her work and research took her to the U.S. Fishery Laboratory in Beaufort, established in 1899. It was in Beaufort that Rachel Carson worked on her first book, Under the Sea-Wind. The landscape there literally drips with rich wildlife, species, fish, and history – the perfect scenario for her studies.”
It was the perfect scenario for childhood, too. “As a child, I had no desire to visit other places,” Lambert says. “Why? When you live in a paradise, an oasis of pure joy. Summers were the best, daily returning home only for meals and exploring these precious gifts bestowed to us. Exhausted at day’s end, I would go to our backyard small pond to watch the seahorses and other species nested in a beautiful habitat. Polly, our Emden goose, was well-fed to ensure no pond-dweller was attacked.”
While not as simple as feeding a goose, Carson saw the need to protect all – wildlife and people – key to environmental justice.
In 1962’s Silent Spring, she wrote clearly about the need for environmental protections from the indiscriminate use of DDT, a powerful pesticide that can have long-ranging health effects on both wildlife and humans. Her 1962 book is credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970.
Today, visitors to Beaufort can catch the Rachel Carson ferry to walk the sandy and marshy paths see did. She wanted the natural beauty to continue for the benefit of species and mankind. “A courageous woman who took on the chemical industry and raised questions about humankind’s impact on nature – I wish our pathways would have crossed,” says Lambert.
