Nature & Environmental Writing

I am a beginner to blogging, which has now been initiated by the Nature and Environmental Writing course I am taking for Chatham University's MFA program. I have often thought about how one's environment shapes her character. For instance, I grew up in the Poconos, where I spent a lot of time being active in the outdoors. My father hunts deer, primarily, and I have often contemplated the morals of this act. He also grew up on a farm, which I know very little about, except that there are right and wrong ways to care for cows. Many of my family members fish; this is something my brother still loves to do as a hobby, but I have not done so for a very long time. Wen I was young, my brother and I often hiked and explored, and my mother truly loves buying and planting flowers to make her house presentable. I recall several chores that I was not particularly fond of, including sifting dirt and picking up sticks. Part of the environmental movement includes paying attention to the creation of suburb, that is, using chemicals, pesticides, making a house look "pretty." There are several images that I distincly love and remember from the house I grew up in, which are the mint leaves growing on the hillside and the apple tree that we have never eaten from. This imagery often appears in my poetry, where I draw parallels and create metaphors. It is my hope that participating in this class will help me further explore natural landscapes and interpret my own internal landscape/reasons for writing. I feel that I will be challenged most when asked to write nonfiction essays or works of fiction, since these are not the primary genres that I practice.