Copyright 2002
Wilderness Drum, Inc.
All rights reserved Closer to the Earth
Steve Beyer Writing about Nature We have learned to live in a largely textual world, so one way of getting close to nature may be to go ahead and write about it. The following experiments may give you some ideas strengthening and articulating your sensory awareness of the wilderness.  Keep a journal. Draw pictures in it. Keep a journal of only pictures – no words at all. Keep a journal by writing words on the ground with a stick, and every morning wipe out what you wrote the day before. Keep a journal entirely in your mind. Keep a journal as if you were a forest creature watching the behavior of this strange human intruder.
Write about imaginary sensory experiences. What is the sound of snow falling, or butterfly wings in the air, or a worm digging in the dirt? What is the sound of the sun shining? What does a bird's song look like? What is the taste of a cloud?
Write a haiku – a seventeen-syllable three-line poem with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven syllables in the middle line. For example,
Write a concrete poem. Draw the letters and words so that they form a pictorial representation of the subject of the poem, or so that their spatial arrangement suggests the relationships among the poem's ideas.
Write a cinquain. A cinquain is a recently invented poetic form with five lines; each line contains a set number of words or syllables, and each line has a prescribed function in the poem: Line | Words or Syllables | Function | 1 | 1 | 2 | Names the subject | 2 | 2 | 4 | Describes the subject | 3 | 3 | 6 | Tells what the subject is doing | 4 | 4 | 8 | Tells how you feel about the subject | 5 | 1 | 2 or 3 | Renames the subject |
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