Image: Deer cavorting as gracefully as dancers on a gravel in my backyard
This is not a nature blog, but I post frequently about the wildlife and flora in my yard. You might ask why I bother? I'll admit to a fascination with nature if not with nature writing. If you have ever stepped outside on a summer morning and seen the tens of thousands of dew laden spider webs glistening in the morning light, you will understand the joy, awe and surprises that nature holds for us. I also find that as a writer, using nature as a writing exercise is a powerful tool to improve my skill at describing an environment in a way that brings it alive. For example, take twenty minutes and write about a stand of trees. Describe the differing shades of green among the trees leaves in the height of summer. Think about how the wind moves among the leaves and branches. What creatures live in the tree, or in the wood under the tree's canopy?
In college I took a course on the 'American Wilderness Experience' because it included a number of hiking and backpacking trips. One trip involved small group hiking in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. One of the groups found a human jawbone in a creek down in the gorge. They put it in a plastic baggie and carried it out. The park rangers explained that they had a number of unsolved reports of hikers who simply disappeared while in the park. Given the location of the find they already suspected who the remains belonged to and were able to send a forensics team in to search the area for the rest of the remains.
We also read extensively about wilderness experiences. Two books stood out in my mind: Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac and Thoreau's Walden, or Life in the Woods. I found the Sand County Almanac to be the more compelling of the two books. Leopold had a narrative style that I found entertaining and informative, and it was different than the junk I usually read. After all I the times I had been told i absolutely read Walden because it was the best thing ever, I was actually very disappointed, but I should probably give it another try. I decided that Thoreau was a fraud when he revealed that his cabin was a half day's walk from town and that he semi-regularly picked up his mail and limited supplies. I absolutely refused to allow myself to get emotionally engaged with his account after learning that detail
Writer's Note: I've mentioned this before, but when crafting a narrative--even non-fiction--it is important to consider how and when revealing information to your readers will impact their reading experience. It's like when a mystery writer reaches the great reveal and you discover the murder was mentioned once, in passing, in the first ten pages of the book, but was never present again until the denouement.
I also took a rock-climbing class in college. It was a Phys Ed class, and we would drive out to a local abandoned quarry and climb and rappel down the sheer faces left by the gravel operation. (Writer's note: See how I did that? Gravel at the top of the page and here we are again! I wish I could say it was an intentional strategy. All good writing has a smidgen of luck to it.) One day I had just reached the top of a 100' wall when I lost my grip and fell. I was roped and had a a fellow student belaying from below. I fell about forty feet and crashed into the rock wall. The poor kid belaying me was pulled about 15' into the air and also hit the wall. I had bruised from my knees to my shoulders and was sore for days. The instructors were very worried that I would lose my confidence and not be able to climb again, so their immediate reaction was to have me do some rappelling to not become fearful of the wall. They took me to another part of the quarry and had me rappel down another 100' rock wall to a little sand beach along the Scioto River.
The they told me the only way out of that spot was to climb the wall or they would have to call for a boat to rescue me. And it was going to be dark in an hour, so I needed to get going. I probably should have reported them to the university for abusing students, but they did get me to climb the damn wall before it got too dark to see. The moral of that story? Don't take rock climbing classes from your local university taught by GAs who don't understand the first thing about student safety! Or it could be that, as writers, there are moments we need to betray our reader's trust to move the narrative forward in the most effective way possible. I'll let you decide.
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!
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