● Opportunity for conversation ○ Opportunity in the text: How to recognize… a specific place in the text (word/phrase/line) that we can do something with ■ Places we can argue ■ Arguments that are happening ■ Quotations ○ Conversation ■ The discussion between the author and the audience ■ Listening and responding ■ Between you and the author ■ Between the author and their audience ■ Between you and your audience ● Audiences: Who are they? ○ Topic, language, style, tone ○ Culturally neutral pre-writing questions ○ Fascinate ■ Amazing/astonishing ■ Interesting ● Explain what fascinated you and why ● Learn more about the topic, and then tell us what you learned or what position you now hold now that you have more knowledge ● How might other people view this thing? How do we make it fascinating to them? ○ Shock ■ Surprise! ■ Either good or bad, but either way strong. ■ Amazed, or offended, or disgusted, devastated ● Try to respond- talk about the emotions you felt while processing this shock ● Why did it shock you? ● Compare it to normal behavior/opinions/feelings ● Look back and see if it’s true or not ● Look at your own opinions and values-- do you need to rethink them? What can you learn from this? ○ Perplex ■ Confusing or difficult to understand ● Restate and clarify the thing you found confusing ● Examples to clarify-- stay focused on the text though ● Don’t skip it. Be aggressively curious. ● Ask questions!! ○ Gap ■ Space between things ■ A gap in understanding between what the author means and the audience gets from their writing ● Fill the gap with explanation ■ Missing information ■ Cultural ideals/values/experiences/religion ● Learn more so that you do understand ● Translate so that your reader can understand because you are familiar with both cultures ● Don’t ignore it! ● Try to avoid the same misunderstandings in your own writing ● Identify your preconceptions/prejudgments ● Try to be open to new ideas ● Be respectful ○ Tension ■ Stressed, emotional, overworked, tight. ■ Fears, events, overly sensitive to criticism or other points of view ■ The tension that comes from disruption of your world view ■ Offensive (not tolerant), disrespectful ■ Too honest or direct for the culture ● Try to relax the ideas/writer/points of view and allow for others ● Try to smooth the situation ● Help foster respect for other ideas ● Try to help people understand each other ● Read with an open mind until the end (read generously) ○ Contradiction ■ When someone says two opposite things that disagree with each other ● Maybe it’s intentional, and it’s up to you to figure out what the author is trying to do and explain it. ● Maybe the author is trying to highlight this contradiction to make people deal with it. ● Maybe they’re doing it accidentally: you correct them, or call them out on it. ○ Ambiguity ■ Unclear ■ Undecided ● Try to figure it out and make .

1. ● Opportunity for conversation
○ Opportunity in the text: How to recognize… a specific place
in the text
(word/phrase/line) that we can do something with
■ Places we can argue
■ Arguments that are happening
■ Quotations
○ Conversation
■ The discussion between the author and the audience
■ Listening and responding
■ Between you and the author
■ Between the author and their audience
■ Between you and your audience
● Audiences: Who are they?
○ Topic, language, style, tone
○ Culturally neutral pre-writing questions
○ Fascinate
■ Amazing/astonishing
■ Interesting
● Explain what fascinated you and why
● Learn more about the topic, and then tell us what you learned
or
what position you now hold now that you have more knowledge
● How might other people view this thing? How do we make it
fascinating to them?

2. ○ Shock
■ Surprise!
■ Either good or bad, but either way strong.
■ Amazed, or offended, or disgusted, devastated
● Try to respond- talk about the emotions you felt while
processing
this shock
● Why did it shock you?
● Compare it to normal behavior/opinions/feelings
● Look back and see if it’s true or not
● Look at your own opinions and values-- do you need to
rethink
them? What can you learn from this?
○ Perplex
■ Confusing or difficult to understand
● Restate and clarify the thing you found confusing
● Examples to clarify-- stay focused on the text though
● Don’t skip it. Be aggressively curious.
● Ask questions!!
○ Gap
■ Space between things
■ A gap in understanding between what the author means and
the audience
gets from their writing
● Fill the gap with explanation
■ Missing information

3. ■ Cultural ideals/values/experiences/religion
● Learn more so that you do understand
● Translate so that your reader can understand because you are
familiar with both cultures
● Don’t ignore it!
● Try to avoid the same misunderstandings in your own writing
● Identify your preconceptions/prejudgments
● Try to be open to new ideas
● Be respectful
○ Tension
■ Stressed, emotional, overworked, tight.
■ Fears, events, overly sensitive to criticism or other points of
view
■ The tension that comes from disruption of your world view
■ Offensive (not tolerant), disrespectful
■ Too honest or direct for the culture
● Try to relax the ideas/writer/points of view and allow for
others
● Try to smooth the situation
● Help foster respect for other ideas
● Try to help people understand each other
● Read with an open mind until the end (read generously)
○ Contradiction
■ When someone says two opposite things that disagree with
each other
● Maybe it’s intentional, and it’s up to you to figure out what
the
author is trying to do and explain it.
● Maybe the author is trying to highlight this contradiction to

4. make
people deal with it.
● Maybe they’re doing it accidentally: you correct them, or call
them
out on it.
○ Ambiguity
■ Unclear
■ Undecided
● Try to figure it out and make it clear
● Research a bit
● Try to figure out why the author is being ambiguous and what
they’re trying to teach us.
○ Difficulty
■ Do some research, figure it out!
■ Look at the difficulty- is it because the author can’t write, or
is it because
they’re talking about something for which there is no
established
language?
Treasure Hunting
When you move from your claim (isolating your main term or
point to work with) to the essay
itself, you’ll find that it’s time to do some research within the

5. text. The types of things that you
look for will depend heavily on what you chose to focus on in
the first place. Essentially, each
thing that you find will become a focusing point for your body
paragraphs.
Did you choose one of the ways to enter the conversation from
the document we put
together when deconstructing the prompt?
If so, focus on the way in which you responded to the
opportunity you’re responding to.
1. What about it fascinated/shocked/perplexed you?
2. Was there anything else in the text that
fascinated/shocked/perplexed you in a
similar fashion?
3. Are there any other places in the text the reader needs to see
in order to
understand the opportunity you’re responding to?
Did you find an ambiguity, gap, tension, contradiction or
difficulty in the essay?
1. First, find all of the places the author says the first thing.
2. The more times you find it, the more chance it is a deep part
of how they
feel/what they think and the more chance it’s a contradiction.
3. Then, look for how many times they say the second thing that
contradicts the first
one- if it’s just one, it might be that they’re unaware of the
contradiction.
4. Only a few times, it might be a gap, tension, or ambiguity.

6. 5. If it’s a lot of times, it might be that they’re trying to
highlight the contradiction
knowingly, or to foreground a difficulty in their discussion.
6. Once you know which type of contradiction you’re dealing
with, you can start to
figure out how to work through your own discussion of the
problem you’re seeing
in the text.
7. You’re looking for: whether it is intentional/unintentional,
and how strong it is.
Did you choose to focus on a term?
If so, then you should look for all usages of that term, or any
potentially related terms. Then, ask
yourself the following questions:
1. Is the author using the term consistently? If so, how are they
using it? If not,
how do their usages differ from one another?
2. Does the author use any other terms interchangeably with the
term you chose
to focus on? If so, what is that term? Are those usages fully
consistent? If not,
how do they differ at times?
3. Does the author use any terms next to or near or in relation to
that term? If so,
what is the other term? What is the relationship between those
terms?
Did you choose to focus on a paragraph, and narrow your main

7. idea down to one
sentence from that paragraph?
If so, you may have the easiest job of all, because you’re
basically just going to work through
that paragraph throughout the entire essay. However, it’s worth
noting that there may be other
paragraphs or words/phrases/lines that are related, so you may
want to consider expanding
your search!
1. Think about why you chose that paragraph- what about it
appealed to you,
interested you, or made you wonder why it was there?
2. When you look at your paragraph, what role does it play in
the entire essay? Is it
a main argument? Is it something that weakens the overall
argument?
3. Are there any other paragraphs your reader would need to see
in order to
understand that paragraph?
Did you choose to focus on part of a story?
If so, you should ask yourself the following questions:
1. Where does the story begin?
2. Where does the story end?
3. Are there any arguments or statements or questions related to
that story that
show up in other sections of the article?

8. Remember: you should always look for more than you could
possibly use. If it turns out that you
have found way, way too much, then you get rid of the stuff that
isn’t the best or the most
related to what you’re trying to do. However, you may find that
you want to keep things that
others might respond to negatively, and entertain the other
side’s opinions.
When searching:
1. Choose quantity over quality at first.
2. Then, narrow down your choices and put quality ahead of
quantity.
3. Keep your search page and your drafting pages separate;
never save over your
previous work.
4. Name your drafts/documents appropriately, and group them
in folders by subject
and project where possible.
What I Have Learned from Nature
by Grant Mincy
Some of my fondest childhood memories are with my parents
hiking around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One
memory is particularly vivid. I was six and on the trail to
Abrams Falls after a summer rain moved through the forest. The
sun was just again peaking through the canopy. As my folks and
I moved along the trail I noticed water droplets on the leaves of
a rhododendron. We stopped for a rest next to the woody plant
along the bank of Abrams Creek. I sat down, letting my hands
feel the damp Earth, laden with bryophytes. I studied the beads

9. of water on the plant before turning my considerations to the
creek. My love for nature began young.
In the wild I am always in awe of water. Water, in its many
forms, occupies every part of the forest. Clouds are among my
favorite forms water takes. There is nothing like standing on a
green mountain bald on a cool spring day — the clouds steal the
show. Whether weeping grey or puffy white, when the land is
again bursting with life, clouds hug ridges and occupy valleys
in ways that can only be described as breathtaking. I once had
the holy experience of camping in the Blue Ridge of North
Carolina on a late Spring evening at over 5,000 feet. As I hiked
to camp I moved across mountain meadows covered in a thick
fog, but my destination sat above the clouds. That night around
a roaring bonfire, in the company of budding plants and a vast
array of newly awakened wildlife, there was a piercing, radiant
starry night above, and a sea of clouds cracking with lightning
below. All of the heavens witnessed Earth’s wonder.
From the clouds, in the chill of January, snow seems to
continually fall over temperate Appalachian forests. In the
winter, snow dusts the landscape, coating evergreens and the
naked limbs of deciduous trees. When running old trails in this
ancient terrain in the depths of the season, ones own breath is
often visible as it escapes the lungs. If, like I often do, one
follows this vapor in the white landscape, it is hard not to
notice the depth of the mountains this time of year. Though
peppered in white, something about the winter makes the
Appalachians appear dark. Perhaps it is exposed ancient
metamorphic rock, thick ice that clings to steep mountain ridges
and the bare grey bark of trees, but the color avoids a
description. The mountains are mysterious and beautiful beyond
words.
My favorite time in the woods, however, is Autumn. Fall air is
always brisk, the sky is often a beaming cerulean blue, and it is
of no mystery why the southern Appalachians are long
described as “smoky.” A thick mist settles in the mountains in
the fall and the forest changes dramatically daily. Some of my

10. favorite moments of solitude, and thus my life, are experienced
in the mountain lowlands in late autumn. Under the splendor of
November hue, on the banks of a stream I am often lost in
thought as I watch water carve its way through ancient rock
while, at the same time, laying the sediments that will tell
future travelers of our place in history. I swear one can feel the
terrain, littered with a mosaic of detritus, soaked in a thick mist,
and carved by the river continuum breathe this time of year.
Natural places are of incredible importance. John Muir once
wrote: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play
in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body
and soul.” This is a statement of deep ecological truth.
Nature is wild. In the wilderness one is wild. On an early
September afternoon a few years ago I escaped for a lone stroll
in the woods. I worked my way up and around Curry Mountain,
had lunch on a rock in the shade of a great Eastern Hemlock and
was making my way back home when I came across two black
bear along the switchbacks. They saw me before I saw them.
There was a quick dash, a scattering of leaves and I saw the
black fur of a cub run down slope – it was then I noticed the
mama bear. Standing in front of me some 20 yards away was a
rather large beast who was occupying the trail. We stood in
silence, staring at one another for sometime until she let out a
slow growl. I raised my hands to the air and loudly proclaimed,
“I mean you no harm, bear!” She turned and quickly
disappeared into the brush.
Knowing they were still near I kept talking loudly to them as I
slowly made my way through the switchbacks. As time passed I
picked up my pace. Before I knew it I was whooping, laughing
madly and running through the woods. I was jumping over
trickling springs, tree roots and piles of rock. I was full of joy,
my heart pounding furiously. I was myself, simply a human in
purest form, all labels stripped away, no worldly burdens — just
an animal, wild and alive!
This unbound freedom is possible only in the wild. There await
holy experiences everywhere in nature. Whether it is moments

11. of silent, still reflection, or adventurous swimming in the roar
of a river, swallowing its current, pelted by rain, breathing hard
and laughing under the chill of a night sky with brothers,
natural spaces provide us with a liberty that cannot be
experienced in urban corridors. Untouched landscapes are the
cathedrals of nature.
We cannot truly know freedom, nor understand absolute liberty,
without wilderness. The wild will exist long after human
civilization. We have only a precious moment on this Earth, the
blink of an eye regarding the eons in which we measure
geology, to understand boundless freedom. In the wilderness
there exist only the fixed laws of nature. There are no economic
systems, no political powers, no established authority, but
rather an anarchic freedom we are blessed to experience. In
open spaces we are free to live, even if just briefly, absent of
control or administration from the Leviathans of civilization.
This freedom alone is enough to protect wilderness landscapes,
for ourselves and fellow species — nature for nature’s sake.
Wilderness can exist without us, but we are doomed without it.
May we preserve wild lands – coasts, deserts, forests and
mountains – so we may preserve what makes life worth living:
Liberty.
Imagine the forest. Suddenly, with a crack of lightning and
thunderous boom, from dark, weeping clouds, falls a torrent of
water. Plummeting from the vivid horizon towards the lush,
ominous hue of green Earth, the cascade crashes into a mixed
canopy of poplar, oak, hemlock and spruce.
A rich, harmonious chorus fills the brilliant forest. A howling
melody of pattered rain pails the rhododendron, splats the
trillium, showers the fern, soaks the detritus and beads the moss
before saturating the damp, woodland floor. Beneath the soil,
among mycorrhizae, annelids and abundant microbes there is a
pull downslope, a burst from a spring and the rush of a high
country stream. Along twists and turns, crags and ridge, falls
and flow there is a longing for, and final jubilation with, the
communion of rivers roar. Among carved rock and knotted limb,

12. the journey across the watershed begins long toward the basin.
What a great, dangerous adventure!
Nothing but a dizzying wonder awaits beyond every fall, rapid
and maelstrom eddy. As clouds recede the Earth breaths a
mountain mist, illuminated by the sun, that instills natures heart
breaking splendor. Oh, be free young, wild torrent! In wildness
may you travel deeper still! Rush along your crooked channel
walls, carve the valley, shape the open plain, welcome the delta,
bask in the sea, rise to the heavens and fall once more!
Imagine yourself in this forest. A human animal. An individual.
Sitting, legs crossed on a moss laden log. The water showers
your spirit. Soul happy! You stare into the canopy. There’s an
unbreakable smile on your face. You laugh, roar and howl!