14/04/2014

Pennsylvania, USA: The car ride was surprisingly short; before I knew it, I was looking up at the childhood home of Rachel Carson. I had come to find out what inspired her to kick-start the environmental movement and how well we heeded her warning.

I stepped out into the chill morning air and reticent sunshine in suburban Springdale, Pennsylvania. A small black and white woodpecker clattered the branch above me. A simple white-boarded farmhouse looked down toward the leafy street. It was April 14^th, and the anniversary of Carson’s untimely death less than two years after Silent Spring.

A sign outside the house welcomed the curious to the ‘Wild Creatures Nature Trail’, where Carson began her lifelong fascination with the natural world. It was inscribed with her own words as a fourteen-year-old:

‘The call of the trail on that dewy May morning was too strong to withstand . . . It was the sort of place that awes you by its majestic silence, interrupted only by the rustling breeze and the distant tumble of water.’

I was on the last leg of my Farmageddon tour and wanted to find out what inspired Rachel Carson to be such a pioneering voice for the environment. Click here to see exclusive video footage of what I found… on Rachel Carson Day.

To get your copy of Farmageddon: the true cost of cheap meat, click here