LAND JOURNAL #5

 

We would have to memorize and remember the land, walk from it, eat from its soils and from the animals that ate its plants. We would have to know its winds, inhale its airs, observe the sequence of its flowers in the spring and the range of its birds.To inquire after this knowledge is to make our proposals, to answer the antiphony. To be intimate with the land like this is to enclose it in the same moral universe we occupy, to include it in the meaning of the word community.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 33-34

We’re anxious now to know what the land has to say to us, how it responds to our use of it. And we are curious, too, about indigenous systems of natural philosophy, how our own Western proposals might be answered by some bit of this local wisdom, an insight into how to conduct our life here so that it might be richer. And so that what is left of what we have subjugated might determine its own life.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p.19-20

If we feel wisdom itself is lost, we need only enter a library. We will find there the records of hundreds of men and women who believed in a world larger than the one defined in each generation by human failing. We will find literature, which teaches us again and again how to imagine.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 53

Go to the library and learn about some of the native plants or insects or birds at your place, or ones thaty might have been there before contact. Write about what you learn. Use at least one source. Cite your source using the correct format.

ALTERNATE OPTION

Your place, its names, rains and winds all have a significance in Hawaiian culture. Find a book that gives you some information you didn’t know and write about what you learn. For the names of winds, look at The Wind Gourd of La‘amaumau. For place names, look at Sites of O‘ahu and Place Names of Hawai‘i. One greatly under-used resource is Native Planter, by Handy and Handy, which will tell you the names of the phases of the moon, and which are the nights of Kane, or of Ku. There is a map room in the Hawaiian Collection, with lots of old maps. Use at least one source. Cite your source using the correct format.

 

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #5

Avoid
Overuse of the verb to be (is, are, am, was, were). Overuse of the phrase there is or there are, etc., especially at the beginning of a sentence.

Include
A variety of interesting verbs and a variety of sentence beginnings.
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