Guided By Its Light: Nature Writing with Jim O'Donnell
Class will be held partly outdoors so dress for the weather. Writing has long been a means of exploring and understanding the natural world. Nature writing also provides an opportunity to personally reconnect with the natural world and build a sense of place for our larger community. This intensive course looks at how the work of writing nature helps to re-establish a sense of place, recalibrates our internal compass to what is vital in life and raises awareness of both the human place in nature and the impact humans have on the natural world. This course involves numerous active writing and observing exercises. We will review various forms of nature writing (essays, articles, poetry, journals), discuss critical thinking skills, ask how and why, reflect on our own experiences of nature and expand those reflections into coherent and well-formed essays, stories and poems using concrete details, point of view and creating vivid scenes. We want to move from being inarticulate about nature to a lyrical precision about the natural world. Taos writer and conservation photographer Jim O’Donnell is the author of “Notes for the Aurora Society: 1500 Miles Across Finland on Foot” and “Rise and Go”. He is also to blame for numerous articles, sordid tales, brilliant observations, half-finished novels, angry letters-to-the-editor and other scribbling. His work has appeared in National Geographic Maps, BBC Travel, Trend, New Mexico Magazine, Matador, Peaks and Plains, Traveler’s Tales, Perceptive Travel, Vrai Magazine and many others. Learn more at www.aroundtheworldineightyyears.com and www.jimodonnellphotography.com