Writings about Nature

Almost every autumn, we go outside into nature and literally stop and smell the flowers.

Naturalistic intelligence is important to cultivate, and seeing and sensing nature is a great antidote to our high-tech lives. It calms our emotions, liberates our spirits, sharpens our senses, and puts into perspective our troubles. This writing activity differentiates typical classroom instruction: we take clipboards, pencils, and warm coats outside and observe "what is" up close in nature, at times quite objectively or scientifically. I encourage students to combine these observations with remembered information learned in seventh grade biology class and the elementary school's Big Backyard program. For local wildflowers, I show them pictures and then point out pale purple asters, tansy, goldenrod, and milkweed; for wild shrubs or larger plants: the pretty and persistant bittersweet vine, the euonymus or "burning bush," black raspberry vines, cattails by the marshy areas, and staghorn sumac; for the to-be-avoided plants: stinging nettles, and poison ivy. As writers, it helps to be able to recognize some of the most common wildflowers in our local fields and woods. Teaching or reminding students about poison ivy and stinging nettles is just plain community service! "Leaflets-three, let it be" is a memorable motto. I'll also point out plants they might also recognize from their yards, dandelions, etc. For trees, we learn about the straight-limbed white ash tree, the shagbark hickory with its nuts, the locust tree with its frilly leaves, the white oak with its rounded ear-like lobes, which contrasts with the pointy-lobed red or black oak, the white pine and red pine, the curious tulip tree, the water-loving, fiery red or swamp maple, the sturdy Norway maple, and the glorious sugar maple, the catalpa with its immense leaves and long seed pods, the fast-growing ailanthus or "tree of heaven," and the wild cherry. I tell them that nature writers need to be amateur biologists and know their local flora. We start by observing shapes and hopefully learn some names. After all, it sounds a lot better to mention a tree by its name than to always call it a tree. There's more of a sense of connection and familiarity with nature if you know the names of your local plants. But we also put on our poetic glasses and also view the scene holistically, the parts summed up together, when we sense the mood and atmosphere. Sensing the mood or atmosphere can happen after accumulating many sensory details. I want them to have a theme in mind as they write, such as how life is transitory or fleeting. When they are outside, they should look for imagery that brings out or resonates with this theme (or another theme that works with what they experience). Their theme and how it's presented through their imagery and setting should hold their writing together. I'll be looking to see how their theme emerges in and unifies their writing.

Once we have arrived at our destinations outdoors, we spread out and take notes. We accumulate sensory details (sights, sounds, smells, sensations/touches -- no tastes, thank you!). We make observations about the weather and note the mood or atmosphere of the place. Students notice details and capture them on paper with clipboards.

Then, later we take our notes and render them in paragraph form, aiming to avoid simply listing the accumulated notes. Instead, we set up other organizational approaches, such as "general to specific" (seen in paragraph 2 below) or "chronological sequence" (see in paragraph 3 below). In terms of word choices, being specific is always preferable. Within sentences, we bring in the figurative language found in poetry -- i.e., personification (how are the clouds personified?), metaphors (describing the leaves as "pale fires"), and similes (crab apples as "cherry-like jewels"). Can you find any other examples of these figurative language techniques? How would you describe the theme? What ideas and images carry this theme?

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The Victory Garden

It’s late October, mid-morning, and the rain at last has stopped. All around us the oaks blaze away, their leathery leaves rust and amber, chocolate brown and hanging on with amazing tenacity. Our fingers chill as we clutch pencils and wish for gloves, not for garden work, but for warmth. Clouds scuttle along, trying to catch their storm.

In the garden, quiet desolation has settled in. The only crops are a few remaining top leaves of kale, and the yellow, frilly tops of seedy asparagus, and a few herbs, lavendar and mint, growing in abandoned profusion. Somehow the grass seems unreasonably green. Goldenrod, that sunny summer plant, is all gone to a dry, stalky gray. Crab apples, those cherry-like jewels, have turned brown and mushy. Some dry milkweed pods remain. The great ark that was summer is now ruptured, hammered apart, its cargo gone, a feathery diaspora on a relentless wind.

How did it all happen so fast? Old friends seem distant. November looms, its swiftly darkening afternoons, the reassuring, lingering splashes of color evaporating. Pale fires drown into to dust, wet leaves quit trees in windy droves. In the garden, harvest fades into memory, its sweet music now a faint wisp, a bird’s cheep far across a field. The scarecrow sags, corn stalk stuffing spilling from its joints, and the victory garden sinks into its muddy remains.

-- John Chamberlain