New Purpose

I began this blog as a way to begin writing on my senior thesis. I wrote about why I chose to write about birds, the three main texts I was planning to use, and a little bit about the bird imagery in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I didn’t write very much more, because I started writing my actual thesis, which ended up being nearly 100 pages and earning me departmental honors in Environmental Studies and the Palamountain Prose Award. I had plans to continue working on it, but as Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes of mice and men / Go often askew.” So I never added to the pages of my thesis, though I continued reading about birds. And now I will continue writing about birds, and other things, but for a different purpose. I am reinstating this blog so that I may continue writing. Specifically, I am going to work on my nature writing in this blog. As passionate about environmental literature as ever, and with a reading list including authors such as John Muir, Annie Dillard, John McPhee, David Quammen, Bill McKibben, and others, it’s time to become more serious about my own nature writing. I figure the best way to begin is by writing short entries about my daily observations in nature. And because I think it is fitting, I will begin with birds.