The Nature Writing Journey - A Creative Writing Workshop with Thea Gavin

In my last two posts I mentioned a creative writing workshop that Thea Gavin, Orange native, poet, Irvine Ranch Conservancy docent, & college writing professor, has been putting together. The outline for the course has just been sent to me - and so it is with great excitement that I post it here for you all to view.

All those interested in the course should contact the Irvine Ranch Conservancy for more information on registration.

The Nature Writing Journey
Writing Workshop
…wild words for local landscapes

Wallace Stegner, in his essay “A Sense of Place,” writes about the importance of literature in making a place significant:

“... no place is a place until it has had a poet . . . . No place, not even a wild place, is a place until it has had that human attention that at its highest reach we will call poetry. What Frost did for New Hampshire and Vermont, what Faulkner did for Mississippi and Steinbeck for the Salinas Valley, Wendell Berry is doing for his family corner of Kentucky, and hundreds of other place-loving people, gifted or not, are doing for places they were born in, or reared in, or have adopted and made their own.”

Even before I had read Stegner, though, I heard local naturalists talk about the fact that Orange County needed its own environmental literature to help connect people to the land so that they would appreciate it—and maybe want to protect it.

In this spirit, and in light of the recent efforts of the 2007 and 2008 Heritage Art Exhibitions to preserve and share the beauty of the Irvine Ranch National Natural Landmark via plein air paintings, this class is dedicated to communicating the ecological magnificence of our Orange County wild places.

Instead of pigments and paint brushes, participants in this workshop will use words to paint their pictures in poetry and prose. Our subject will be the wild spaces of Orange County, and our goal will be to present them in compelling, imaginative language that will preserve the stories and scenes for this and future generations to enjoy. Speaking of enjoyment . . . contrary to what many folks experienced in their formal schooling, writing can—and should—be fun. The ability to laugh is the only prerequisite for this course.

This free, 6-week writing workshop is limited to 12 participants who will spend Sunday afternoons wandering in, and writing about, some beautiful, local wild places in the Irvine Ranch Conservancy’s Fremont, Blackstar, Baker and Limestone Canyons. (Mother’s Day weekend the class will meet on Saturday instead of Sunday, just in time to watch the full moon rise over Old Saddleback.)

Workshop dates: 4/5, 4/19, 4/26, 5/3, 5/9, 5/17. (No workshop Easter weekend.)
Workshop times: 4- 6 pm, except for 5/9, when we’ll meet 6-8 pm to watch the moonrise.
Workshop facilitator: Thea Gavin—Orange native, poet, Irvine Ranch Conservancy docent, college writing professor.