WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

Using Annie Dillard's "Heaven and Earth in Jest" as a guide, I used a journey of a day at early morning crew practice to reveal experiencing relating to language and the often backwards nature of life. In approaching this essay, I began by rereading "Heaven and Earth in Jest" multiple times, each time with a different purpose. How and why did she organize the chapter as she did? I wrote a rough outline of her piece, noting not only how Dillard crafted her storyline but also the differences between narration and description, tense change (i.e. past to present), and person change (i.e. first person to second person). I also noted where she made breaks in the writing and pondered why she made these halts.

Next I wrote a stream-of-conscious list of thoughts. I already had chosen my journey, but how would I deviate from that watery path? The order in which thoughts came to me was crucial and made me examine which thoughts connected and why. This exercise helped me to create a logical storyline base.

I chose to write about crew because I feel passionate about this new activity. I wanted to be sure, however, that the terminology I used allowed my audience(who I assume is unfamiliar with rowing vocabulary) to comprehend my novice plunders. Though writing for an audience other than myself, I had a personal purpose in as well. What have I learned from my crew experiences? On one of the first days of crew, our coach warned us to be patient; being Stanford student athletes, most of us were used to succeeding at what we do. Going through the rowing learning process has humbled me, but how? How does my struggle to learn aquatic lingo parallel my love of languages? Partially due to crew, I dropped my Italian class this quarter. In writing this essay, I hoped to justify to myself this language exchange of sorts.

When my mom used to proofread my high school papers, sometimes she would gently criticize my drafts by telling me the voice of the piece did not sound like my own. Likewise she would compliment me when, after multiple revisions, my writing burst with my individual energies and passions, with my own voice. I conveyed my voice in this essay by choosing main topics that are important to me. In my stream-of-consciousness warm-up, I jotted down multiple ideas but later eliminated topics that did not inspire me, topics that directly or actively did not involve my plot or me. In choosing to write about incidents that are seared in my mind, I stayed true to the essence of myself, thereby proclaiming my voice. I also employed my voice by using vocabulary from "foreign" languages that I speak or am learning to speak. I also liberally used voices from my past, voices that echo in my mind. If these voices are important to me, they are important in telling my story.

I organized my essay into six main sections. I began with the lyrics to the telenovela to grasp my reader's attention. After debating whether to begin with the topic of languages or crew, I decided on crew because Dillard began her chapter by recreating a reoccurring scene from the past. The second section was short to emphasize the point of living life in reverse. The third section was dream-like, revealing my confusion between the words "starbird" and "starboard." I showed my epiphany through recreating reality, writing down the conversation I had with myself in my head. In the fourth section I begin with the progression of my journey and end with a related story. The story of the boy decorating the tree may seem abrupt at first, but it reinforces my theme of triumphing over seemingly daunting new tasks. In the fifth section I illustrate the connection between my friends' feeling of being lost and the novice crew team's similar feeling. In the last section I return to the subject of moving backwards, contrasting rowing to running. I conclude by repeating Claudia's quote, but backwards, tying in both my themes of language and backwards life.