Here is the fourth edition of our series on descriptive writing. I find it interesting that the art of vivid description has an opportunity to flourish particularly among historic resources and their stories we find across our nation. Though the principals may be long-dead, the landscapes and objects that were a part of their everyday lives provide us with appreciation and understanding of who they were, what they valued, and how they lived. Our writing sample today involves a landscape. It begins with a powerful examination of the degradation of resource and process. It ends with animism and a thinking mountain.
Those who make our rich environment, both natural and cultural, a vocation or hobby should recognize our writer. So who is our author - a notable nature writer - and where does this quote appear in his work?
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn … In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers … So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the change. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.
No comments:
Post a Comment