Chapter 15: Return
In the final chapter, Carson again shares the beauty she finds in the sea:
Before the eyes of the eels, clouds of copepods vibrated in their ceaseless dance of life, their crystal bodies catching the light like dust motes when the blue gleam came down from above. (p. 143)
She ends the book by showing the big picture:
As the waiting of the eels off the mouth of the bay was only an interlude in a long life filled with constant change, so the relation of sea and coast and mountain ranges was that of a moment in geologic time. For once more the mountains would be worn away by the endless erosion of water and carried in silt to the sea, and once more all the coast would be water again, and the places of its cities and towns would belong to the sea. (p. 151)
This book has opened a new world of reading for me, though I find it challenging: literary science writing. I’ll take a little time now to read secondary sources about Carson and this book.