Rachel Carson didn’t set out to begin the modern environmental movement. The role chose her.

That’s according to Kaiulani Lee, a Maine woman with a unique connection to the noted biologist and writer. Carson, she says, simply had a sense of wonder about the natural world and enjoyed studying the creatures in Maine tide pools or forest meadows. But, eventually, Carson simply saw so many danger signs that she had to stand up and say something.

That led to “Silent Spring,” the 1962 book by Carson that sounded the alarm over pesticides and, in a larger sense, the uncontrolled human manipulation of the environment.

Lee knows what it means to be chosen by a role.

She is a professional actress with deep family ties to midcoast Maine. She calls the Bath region home – the same part of the state where Carson spent her summers and studied nature.

Lee has played roles on and off Broadway, in such TV programs from “The Waltons” to “Law and Order,” and in such movies as “The World According Garp,” “Cujo” and “A Civil Action.” But she has spent much of the past 15 years playing a single role – Rachel Carson – in a play she wrote titled “A Sense of Wonder.”

The one-woman production has taken Lee all over the country and around the world and into theaters that range from a barn in Kansas to the United Nations. She’s been especially busy this year, the 100th anniversary of Carson’s birth, and will be performing in New Mexico, Alaska and other places before the month is over.

“It’s non-stop,” she said.

Next weekend, Lee will be on stage in Maine and also will be featured on public television.

Lee will perform “A Sense of Wonder” at the Common Ground Fair in Unity at 6 p.m. next Saturday. There will be no fee beyond admission to the fair. (Lee is hired to perform the play, though hosts often don’t charge admission.)

On Sunday, Sept. 23, Lee and Carson are scheduled to be the subjects of “Bill Moyers’ Journal.” It airs at 7 p.m. on Maine Public Broadcasting Network and is expected to include parts of the play interspersed with interviews.

Lee is part of the Sewall family that settled in midcoast Maine 200 years ago. She is the sixth Sewall daughter to carry the name of Hawaiian Princess Kaiulani. Her daughter is the seventh. The name also was given to the last square-rigger built in Bath by Lee’s great-great-grandfather, Arthur Sewall.
Lee wrote “A Sense of Wonder” after re-reading “Silent Spring” and consulting with Carson’s relatives and scholars.

“It’s always been more than a role,” Lee said. “I love the natural world and I feel it’s my cradle, my church. She articulated so much of what I felt … It’s an idea and a story that needed to be told.”

In the second act of Lee’s play, Carson’s role in history is taking shape. It’s 1963, “Silent Spring” has created a huge controversy, the chemical industry is attacking her, the media and Congress want to hear from her and she is dying from cancer.

Kaiulani performed the play to a congressional audience in May. “One of my goals for her birthday was to take her back to Capitol Hill,” she said.
Lee insists she never gets tired of the role.

“It’s totally wonderful to be able to travel to people all over the country and bring them Rachel Carson,” she said. “The audience is the second character, and the audience is different every night.”

At the end of each play, Lee answers questions from the audience. Many of them want to know what Carson would think if she were here now.

“I think she would be concerned about the state of things today. (But) she would be elated by the involvement of people and organizations,” Lee said. “I see people in all walks of life … working very hard to preserve and protect and conserve. That wasn’t there when she wrote these books.”

Before Carson, there also was no Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act, and no U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “A lot of wonderful things have happened, “ Lee said.

Lee sometimes comes across people who say Carson was wrong and that her alarmist book did more harm than good. She has performed for audiences of skeptics.

“Dialogue is good,” Lee said. And the fact that the attacks continue 43 years after Carson’s death only shows how important Carson was and still is, she said.

As Carson’s messenger sees it, Carson’s message is just as timely today.

“We need to be educated as a populace. We can’t assume that everything we’re doing is right and we need to find out what the costs are,” Lee said. “She’s asking really basic questions that haven’t changed.”

Look her for a Web page about Lee.

And look here for information about the Common Ground Fair.

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