Whenever we go out into nature, we bring all our memories with us. In this assignment, ask yourself what are your most important feelings and attitudes towards nature, and where did you get them?

This week you will observe yourself as well as your setting. Certain feelings, moods, memories, even fantasies will be stirred by your connection with a natural setting. Some of these may disguise themselves as physical reactions, like feeling especially chilly or uncomfortable. Sometimes you may hide an unpleasant memory under a generalized feeling of being bored or irritable.

Before you can be an effective observer, you must acknowledge who you are, and what you bring into the observation. Do you connect nature with work and difficulty because your grandfather, who was a fieldhand in his youth, helped you see it that way? Were you ever injured while playing outside, leading you to think of nature as dangerous? Until you recognize what you bring with you, you cannot really see what is around you.

If you have an especially strong resistance to awareness of your own memories, this may well present itself as boredom. In such a case, you may have to engage in more than one observation to get to the source of the resistance. If you find yourself putting off doing your observation, this may be a clue to some inner resistance.

People have lived in nature since the beginning of our species. We are taught to fear it or find it threatening; that is not an innate reaction to nature. Discovering what has come between you and nature is an important part of this process, for those who have had such experiences.

Of course, not everyone-happily-will have had negative experiences in nature. Even so, you will have within yourself presumptions and assumptions about nature. What are they? Where did they come from? Listen to your inner voices during your observation period. What comments do you find yourself repeating frequently? What surprises you, what feels out of place or ugly to you? These are clues as to what you expect. To truly observe means to know the observing instrument as well as the thing observed.

Once again, write more than you need. Write freely, as though in a journal, about the various feelings and memories which emerged as you did your observation this week. You may not come upon the most vital memory immediately.

Writing is not only a tool for communication, for recording what you have found; it is a tool for discovery as well. During this week, use that tool to explore as much as you can about the way you approach the natural world.

Once you have explored sufficiently so that you feel familiar with your memories and attitudes, write a short description of one memory. Write it as though it is a short story. Do not use "I" but rather "he" or "she" to refer to yourself. Be as vivid as possible in describing the event.

In your last revision before concluding, go through your piece and eliminate or replace any labeling words-words that do not describe but evaluate. "The sky was beautiful and clear." What is "beautiful"? It is a label for a series of sense perceptions; it is not a perception of nature. "The sky was clear of clouds and a pale watery blue" is based in sensory information rather than evaluation. "She felt bad." In what way? Where in her body did she feel bad? "She felt her shoulders grow tense and her breathing become shallow." Now your reader knows-feels in her own body-what you're talking about.

Sense words are words having color, shape, fragrance, flavor. They let us into the world of memory as well as the world of sense. When that event happened, you were there with all your senses. Paint the picture for us so that we, too, experience it as you did.