This is my final project for my 'American Environmental Writing' course. It's cross-posted from my class blog (obviously). But I legitimately really like it, enough that I've worked with it some more since and even submitted it for a contest! I have presented things in the opposite order than I did initially; the text is first, with the "preface" ( Read more... )

This is cross-posted from my class blog.Lawrence Buell ascribes four characteristics to environmental writing: nature is more than just a framing device but is intricately connected to human history; the human interest isn’t the only legitimate one; human accountability to the environment is explored; and the environment is (at the very least ( Read more... )

cross-posted from my class blogMany of this week’s readings deal with the concept of the outsider. Native Americans, Mormons, African Americans, and magicians lend their voices in support of the environment against the prevailing culture that devalues and destroys it. As members of marginalized groups themselves, it is easy to see how the authors ( Read more... )

As soon as I read the word “polarized” in Wendell Berry’s essay “Preserving Wildness,” I thought of the current political climate. The election is fast approaching, and although environmental issues aren’t at the top of either candidate’s agenda, they are a consideration for voters. Although written decades ago, some of Berry’s points are still ( Read more... )

This is an essay I wrote for my American Environmental Writing, cross-posted from that class's blog to here because I can :)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a difficult book to describe because its author, Annie Dillard, jumps from topic to topic and scene to scene on a dime. She even effectually starts over mid-way through the book with a giant flood ( Read more... )

cross-posted from my class blog

Death abounds in this section of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It opens with a flood that kills crops and animals and even people in other towns downriver, and then goes into a litany of various insect species eating their own kind. Or, offspring just don’t find what they need, be it an anchor hold in the ( Read more... )

This entry is cross-posted from the blog I'm keeping for my 'American Environmental Writing' classSo far, environmental writing has encompassed philosophy, mathematics, biology, religion, mythology, and poetics- as if that isn’t enough, Aldo Leopold adds history to the mix ( Read more... )

This is the first of the writing assignments for my 'American Environmental Writing' class

“A written word is the choicest of relics,” Thoreau declares in Walden (69). He is referring to written words of quality, not the popular Little Readings of his day, and specifically to the Classics, the works of ancient poets like Homer and Virgil. While ( Read more... )

I consider myself a writer above most other descriptors. The clever turn of phrase, the moving image, the salient metaphor- these things please me. Thoreau is a writer as well, and a very serious one at that. The first time I read Walden, I was disappointed, actually, by most of the imagery he used. He isn’t painting wonderful vistas with his words ( Read more... )

Cross-posted from my class blog.

Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay may be called “Walking,” but the word he seems most focused on is “sauntering.” Thoreau uses his daily walks as a way to clear his head and let his thoughts run freely. Thoreau makes a point of connecting nature to thoughts: In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow ( Read more... )