Reflective Essay for Readings on “Place”

To get to know you better, write an essay where you use your experience of reading the essays on “place” to reflect on an encounter you have had with a place, either past or present, but get in lots of details about the place--map it in words.

You might focus your attention on the sights, sounds, and smells of your place as you attempt to evoke it for your reader (someone not from your place). 

Think about the history of your relationship to the place you are writing about. What events occurred before you knew this place that may have influenced your experience of/attitude toward it? What assumptions have colored your experience of this place? Has your relationship to this place changed over time? How? Why? Also think of the future: What do you think will ultimately happen to this place and to your relationship with it? Can you imagine a different outcome?

Some other questions/issues to think about:

• Is it the physical environment, the human community, or some combination of both that is important to you about this place?
  
  
• Think about the ways of becoming intimate with a place that Lopez describes. How did you become intimate with the place you are writing about? What did you (or do you) get out of your relationship to this place.
  
  
• Have you ever felt that the place you are writing about is or could be threatened in some way? If so, how did/would you respond?
  
  
• Where do you come down on the arguments presented by Lopez and Daniels, as a stayer/nester or a wanderer?

About 2 – 3 pages.