[English 101 Sample Assignment #2a]              

                                                                                                           Dave Golz

I WILL TELL YOU OF A PLACE I KNOW

                Certain places have special resonance in our thoughts and memoirs.  Some places seem to have helped to shape who we are and how we think of ourselves.  In Basin and Range, John McPhee describes the mountain and valley terrain of Nevada for his readers.  Here is an excerpt:

Basin.  Fault.  Range.  Basin.  Fault.  Range.  A mile of relief between basin and range.  Stillwater Range.  Pleaant Valley.  Tobin Range.  Jersey Valley.  Sonoma Range.  Pumpernickel Valley.  Shoshone Range.  Reese River Valley.  Pequop Mountains.  Steptoe Valley.  Ondographic rhythms of the Basin and Range.  We are maybe forty miles off the interstate, in the Pleasant Valley basin, looking up at the Tobin Range.  At the nine-thousand-foot level, there is a stratum of cloud against the shoulders of the mountains, hanging like a ring of Saturn.  The summit of Mount Tobin stands clear, above the cloud.  When we crossed the range, we came through a ranch on the ridgeline where sheep were fenced around a running brook and bales of hay were bright green.  Junipers in the mountains were thickly hung with berries, and the air was unadulterated gin.  This country from afar is synopsized and dismissed as “desert”—the home of the coyote and the pocket mouse, the side-blotched lizard and the vagrant shrew, the MX rocket and the pallid bat.  There are minks and river otters in the Basin and Range.  There are deer and antelope, porcupines and cougars, pelicans, cormorants, common loons.  There are Bonaparte’s gulls and marbled godwits, American coots and Virginia rails.  Pheasants.  Grouse.  Sandhill cranes.  Ferruginous hawks and flammulated owls.  Snow geese.  This Nevada terrain is not corrugated, like the folded Appalachians, like a tubal air mattress, like a rippled potato chip.  This is not—in that compressive manner—a ridge-and-valley situation.  Each range here is like a warship standing on its own. . . .

                Compose an essay of three to five pages (typed, double-spaced, in a 10-, 11-, or 12-point font).  Without going into particular events that happened to you there, or how those events shaped your life, simply describe that place in detail, with emphasis on particular things that make that place unique or significant.  Of course, you may want to describe events that are a regularly occurring part of the place—“A long Southern Pacific train snakes its way toward the pass pulled by four huffing puffing locomotives, all of which, in spite of the steep grade, seem to think they can.”

                Rather than try to imitate McPhee’s writing, look for your own way of describing a significant place.  For example, you may or may not want to use specific place names as McPhee does.  Animal life may or may not be an important part of your place.

Audience and Purpose

                Give your readers—your classmates and me in this case—a vivid impression of what it is like to be in that place.  Use your description of the things that constitute the place to give us a sense of its significance.

Prewriting Help

                Think of a place, outdoors or indoors, that has particular meaning to you.  It may be a place you have visited while traveling, or a place you think of as home, or a place you’ve encountered as part of school or work experiences.  Picture the place in your mind’s eye for a few minutes.  When you are ready, make a list of things you see there.  Write a short paragraph saying what you noticed when you made the list.  Write a paragraph or two describing the place.  Notice what thoughts arose while you were writing that description.  Put yourself back into the place in your imagination, and notice sounds, smells, or anything else there.  Write again.  If you get stuck, go back again and see what else is there that you can use.

Download an RTF version of Sample #2a