Process Analysis

Chapter 3

Process Analysis

Often thought of as a way to develop scientific papers, process analysis can be used with a variety of topics and in combination with many of the other methods of development illustrated in this text. It is the type of writing used to convey instructions—how to change a tire, take someone’s temperature, or write the draft of a college essay. Process analysis can also explain how something happens or happened—the birth of a planet, the way you convinced your boss to give you a raise, or even how light and sound are transmitted to our eyes and ears. Like narratives, essays on such topics generally follow chronological order, with all the steps in the process unfolding like the events in a well- developed plot. Much is made of transitional words and phrases to keep the reader on the right track. “When you have said everything you can say in this [first] draft,” Richard Marius tells us, “print it out . . . .” And like any good storyteller, the writer of process analysis usually begins at the beginning and follows through to the end, sometimes listing steps by number, and sometimes not, but always providing sufficient detail to help the reader picture the activity accurately and concretely. Sometimes writers of process analysis infuse their work with vivid, if not unnerving, description such as the kind we find in Gretel Ehrlich’s “Chronicles of Ice,” which traces the process by which the world’s ice floes are deteriorating. Note that this essay also comments on the causes of the problem in language that is both moving and persuasive. Nonetheless, the purpose of process analysis is instructive in the most practical sense: Narration and description may show what happens, and causal analysis may explain why it happens, but process analysis always focuses on how it happens. The most important aspect of any process essay, therefore, is clarity. Readers will not follow unless your explana- tions are complete, your language is familiar, and your organization is simple. Take your lead from Richard Marius, who lists important advice and information about writing in easy-to-follow steps. And whenever you give instructions, pay your readers the courtesy of preparing them for the task by mentioning required tools, materials, and expectations. Note that John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes mention the quilt, the peace pipe, and the gourd used during Lame Deer’s first “vision- seeking.”

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Of course, explaining a process does not give you license to produce prose that is dull. Indeed, there is no rule that process papers can’t be sus- penseful and exciting. Take this paragraph from Edward Abbey’s “The Serpents of Paradise”: I’m sitting on my doorstep early one morning, facing the sun as usual, drinking coffee, when I happen to look down and see almost between my bare feet, only a couple of inches to the rear of my heels, the very thing I had in mind. No mistaking that wedgelike head, that tip of horny segmented tail peeping out of the coils. He’s under the doorstep and in the shade where the ground and air remain very cold. In his sluggish condition he’s not likely to strike unless I rouse him by some careless move of my own. Like selections in other parts of this text, those that appear here rep- resent a variety of subjects, approaches, and styles. But there is a common denominator. As you might expect, the selections that follow are models of clarity, but their authors never come across as cold and detached, even when explaining what might at first seem recondite or abstract. The committed—even impassioned—voice of the writer always comes through. That is probably why we read these sometimes “technical” pieces eagerly. Each selection has something important to teach us, but the lesson has relatively little to do with the process its author describes. What we learn here is a need to respect the reader, to understand our attitude toward the subject, and to believe that what we have to say is important.

Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman (b. 1948) was born in Waukegan, Illinois, and was educated at Pennsylvania State University and Cornell University. A versatile writer and student of nature, Ackerman is probably best known for A Natural History of the Senses (1990), from which this selection is taken. Her prose works include The Rarest of the Rare (1995), A Natural History of Love (1994), and On Extended Wings (1985). She has also published several volumes of poetry, among which are Origami Bridges (2002), I Praise My Destroyer (2000), and Jaguar of Sweet Laughter (1991). Ackerman’s books for young people include The Senses of Animals (2001), Bats: Shadows in the Night (1997), and Monk Seal Hideaway (1995). Her latest work is An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain (2004). Ackerman is a recipient of the John Burroughs Nature Award (1997), the Lavan Poetry Award (1985), and the Art of Fact Award for Creative Nonfiction (2000). She has even had a molecule named after her: dianeackerone. Ackerman has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and has been a visiting professor at Cornell and at the University of Richmond. She has also directed Washington

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University’s Writing Program. In 2008, Ackerman won Orion magazine's Orion Book Award for The Zookeeper's Wife, a War Story, the story of a Polish couple's heroic activi- ties in saving many who would otherwise have fallen victim to the Nazis. “Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall” shows that scientific writing, although clear, accurate, and objective, can also be quite engaging.

The stealth of autumn catches one unaware. Was that a goldfinch perching 11 in the early September woods, or just the first turning leaf? A red-winged blackbird or a sugar maple closing up shop for the winter? Keen-eyed as leopards, we stand still and squint hard, looking for signs of movement. Early morning frost sits heavily on the grass, and turns barbed wire into a string of stars. On a distant hill, a small square of yellow appears to be a lighted stage. At last the truth dawns on us: Fall is staggering in, right on schedule, with its baggage of chilly nights, macabre holidays, and spectacular, heart-stoppingly beautiful leaves. Soon the leaves will start cringing on the trees, and roll up in clenched fists before they actually fall off. Dry seedpods will rattle like tiny gourds. But first there will be weeks of gushing color so bright, so pastel, so confettilike, that people will travel up and down the East Coast just to stare at it—a whole season of leaves. Where do the colors come from? Sunlight rules most living things with 22 its golden edicts. When the days begin to shorten, soon after the summer solstice on June 21, a tree reconsiders its leaves. All summer it feeds them so they can process sunlight, but in the dog days of summer the tree begins pulling nutrients back into its trunk and roots, pares down, and gradually chokes off its leaves. A corky layer of cells forms at the leaves’ slender petioles, then scars over. Undernourished, the leaves stop producing the pigment chlorophyll, and photosynthesis ceases. Animals can migrate, hibernate, or store food to prepare for winter. But where can a tree go? It survives by dropping its leaves, and by the end of autumn only a few fragile threads of fluid-carrying xylem hold leaves to their stems. A turning leaf stays partly green at first, then reveals splotches of yellow 33 and red as the chlorophyll gradually breaks down. Dark green seems to stay longest in the veins, outlining and defining them. During the summer, chlorophyll dissolves in the heat and light, but it is also being steadily replaced. In the fall, on the other hand, no new pigment is produced, and so we notice the other colors that were always there, right in the leaf, although chlorophyll’s shocking green hid them from view. With their camouflage gone, we see these colors for the first time all year, and marvel, but they were always there, hidden like a vivid secret beneath the hot glowing greens of summer. The most spectacular range of fall foliage occurs in the northeastern 44 United States and in eastern China, where the leaves are robustly colored, thanks in part to a rich climate. European maples don’t achieve the same flaming reds as their American relatives, which thrive on cold nights and sunny days. In Europe, the warm, humid weather turns the

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leaves brown or mildly yellow. Anthocyanin, the pigment that gives apples their red and turns leaves red or red-violet, is produced by sug- ars that remain in the leaf after the supply of nutrients dwindles. Unlike the carotenoids, which color carrots, squash, and corn, and turn leaves orange and yellow, anthocyanin varies from year to year, depending on the temperature and amount of sunlight. The fiercest colors occur in years when the fall sunlight is strongest and the nights are cool and dry (a state of grace scientists find vexing to forecast). This is also why leaves appear dizzyingly bright and clear on a sunny fall day: The anthocyanin flashes like a marquee. 55 Not all leaves turn the same colors. Elms, weeping willows, and the ancient ginkgo all grow radiant yellow, along with hickories, aspens, bottlebrush buckeyes, cottonweeds, and tall, keening poplars. Basswood turns bronze, birches bright gold. Water-loving maples put on a sym- phonic display of scarlets. Sumacs turn red, too, as do flowering dog- woods, black gums, and sweet gums. Though some oaks yellow, most turn a pinkish brown. The farmlands also change color, as tepees of cornstalks and bales of shredded-wheat-textured hay stand drying in the fields. In some spots, one slope of a hill may be green and the other already in bright color, because the hillside facing south gets more sun and heat than the northern one. 66 An odd feature of the colors is that they don’t seem to have any special purpose. We are predisposed to respond to their beauty, of course. They shimmer with the colors of sunset, spring flowers, the tawny buff of a colt’s pretty rump, the shuddering pink of a blush. Animals and flowers color for a reason—adaptation to their environment—but there is no adaptive reason for leaves to color so beautifully in the fall any more than there is for the sky or ocean to be blue. It’s just one of the haphazard marvels the planet bestows every year. We find the sizzling colors thrill- ing, and in a sense they dupe us. Colored like living things, they signal death and disintegration. In time, they will become fragile and, like the body, return to dust. They are as we hope our own fate will be when we die: Not to vanish, just to sublime from one beautiful state into another. Though leaves lose their green life, they bloom with urgent colors, as the woods grow mummified day by day, and Nature becomes more carnal, mute, and radiant. 77 We call the season “fall,” from the Old English feallan, to fall, which leads back through time to the Indo-European phol, which also means to fall. So the word and the idea are both extremely ancient, and haven’t really changed since the first of our kind needed a name for fall’s leafy abundance. As we say the word, we’re reminded of that other Fall, in the garden of Eden, when fig leaves never withered and scales fell from our eyes. Fall is the time when leaves fall from the trees, just as spring is when flowers spring up, summer is when we simmer, and winter is when we whine from the cold.

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Children love to play in piles of leaves, hurling them into the air like 88 confetti, leaping into soft unruly mattresses of them. For children, leaf fall is just one of the odder figments of Nature, like hailstones or snowflakes. Walk down a lane overhung with trees in the never-never land of autumn, and you will forget about time and death, lost in the sheer delicious spill of color. Adam and Eve concealed their nakedness with leaves, remem- ber? Leaves have always hidden our awkward secrets. But how do the colored leaves fall? As a leaf ages, the growth hormone, 99 auxin, fades, and cells at the base of the petiole divide. Two or three rows of small cells, lying at right angles to the axis of the petiole, react with water, then come apart, leaving the petioles hanging on by only a few threads of xylem. A light breeze, and the leaves are airborne. They glide and swoop, rocking in invisible cradles. They are all wing and may flutter from yard to yard on small whirlwinds or updrafts, swiveling as they go. Firmly tethered to earth, we love to see things rise up and fly—soap bubbles, balloons, birds, fall leaves. They remind us that the end of a season is capricious, as is the end of life. We especially like the way leaves rock, careen, and swoop as they fall. Everyone knows the motion. Pilots sometimes do a maneuver called a “falling leaf,” in which the plane loses altitude quickly and on purpose, by slipping first to the right, then to the left. The machine weighs a ton or more, but in one pilot’s mind it is a weightless thing, a falling leaf. She has seen the motion before, in the Vermont woods where she played as a child. Below her the trees radiate gold, copper, and red. Leaves are falling, although she can’t see them fall, as she falls, swooping down for a closer view. At last the leaves leave. But first they turn color and thrill us for weeks 10 on end. Then they crunch and crackle underfoot. They shush, as children drag their small feet through leaves heaped along the curb. Dark, slimy mats of leaves cling to one’s heels after a rain. A damp, stuccolike mortar of semi- decayed leaves protects the tender shoots with a roof until spring, and makes a rich humus. An occasional bulge or ripple in the leafy mounds signals a shrew or a field mouse tunneling out of sight. Sometimes one finds in fossil stones the imprint of a leaf, long since disintegrated whose outlines remind us how detailed, vibrant, and alive are the things of this earth that perish.

1990

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Content a. Besides the obvious as indicated in the title, what is the purpose of this selection? b. Summarize the process by which leaves change color as explained in paragraphs 2–6.

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c. Why does the most “spectacular range” of colors occur in the northeastern United States and in eastern China? d. What is Ackerman alluding to when she mentions “a state of grace” in paragraph 4? e. What explains the fact that in the fall, one side of a mountain can be green while another is in full color? f. The author says that the colors we see in the fall have been there all through the spring and summer. Explain. g. “Leaves have always hidden our awkward secrets” says Ackerman (paragraph 8). What is she getting at?

Strategy and Style h. Explain the effect of including so many figures of speech in this essay. i. How do Ackerman’s comments in paragraph 7, especially about the “other Fall,” help her achieve her purpose in this essay?

ENGAGING THE TEXT

a. Explain how the author’s purpose is served by what we read in paragraphs 9 and 10. Pay special attention to the last line of this selection. b. Analyze this essay to demonstrate both the scientific acumen and the writing abilities of the author. In other words, explain why this essay is so convincing and so interesting.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING

a. Write an explanation of a natural phenomenon related to one of the seasons of the year. You need not base your essay on scientific research. You can rely on common knowledge and your own observations and experiences for information. For example, if you have lived through a long summer drought, tell what happens to crops in the field, explain how wild animals react, or describe the effects on natural vegetation. You might also relate the steps local municipalities have had to take to conserve water, or even discuss the physical and emotional toll on human beings during times of drought. b. Read Abbey’s “The Serpents of Paradise” in this chapter. Then, write an essay that both compares and contrasts it to Ackerman’s. Consider purpose, tone, and language—literal and figurative. Also, make sure to explain how each of these authors views the natural world. c. Using both library and Internet research, write an essay that explains how a specific natural phenomenon occurs. For example, explain

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the eruption of a volcano, the changing of the tides, the way food is digested, the development of a butterfly, or the production of sun spots. If that doesn’t interest you, consider explaining a “natural” phenomenon one might encounter in science fiction. For example, explain the theory of time travel, the way androids developed, or the process by which computers may someday evolve into the dominant species. If you choose the latter course, try to be as convincing as possible by referencing as much legitimate scientific knowledge and theory as you can.

Ackerman, Diane. “The Morse Code of the Heart: Poems Foster Self- Discovery.” New York Times 3 June 2002: E1. Ackerman talks about her writing of poetry and her new book, Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire. “Into the Realm of the Heart.” Macleans 18 July 1994: 48. Discussion of Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses. “Tea, Sympathy and Superheroes.” U.S. News & World Report 10 Feb. 1997: 70. An interview with the author.

Writing Drafts Richard Marius

A native of Tennessee, Richard Marius (1933–1999) took his bachelor’s degree in jour- nalism at the University of Tennessee and his master’s and doctorate in history at Yale University. He also held a B.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Marius was the author of several historical studies and has received wide acclaim for his full-length biographies of Martin Luther and Thomas More. He also wrote three novels, including The Coming of Rain (1969) and Bound for the Promised Land (1976). A director of the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University, Marius published several books on writing, including The McGraw-Hill College Handbook, which he coauthored with Harvey Wiener, and A Short Guide to Writing about History (1987). “Writing Drafts” first appeared in The Writer’s Companion (1985), his splendid guide for both novice and experienced writers. Although interesting and effective as a model of process analysis, this selection also serves as a practical guide for beginning writers who are committed to seeing writing itself as a process. In addition, Marius’s style is light, accessible, and always engaging.

Finally the moment comes when you sit down to begin your first draft. 11 It is always a good idea at the start to list the points you want to cover. A

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list is not as elaborate as a formal outline. In writing your first list, don’t bother to set items down in the order of importance. List your main points and trust your mind to organize them. You will probably make one list, study it, make another, study it, and perhaps make another. You can organize each list more completely than the last. This preliminary process may save you hours of starting and stopping. 22 Write with your list outline in front of you. Once you begin to write, commit yourself to the task at hand. Do not get up until you have written for an hour. Write your thoughts quickly. Let one sentence give you an idea to develop in the next. Organization, grammar, spelling, and even clarity of sentences are not nearly as important as getting the first draft together. No matter how desperate you feel, keep going. 33 Always keep your mind open to new ideas that pop into your head as you write. Let your list outline help you, but don’t become a slave to it. Writers often start an essay with one topic in mind only to discover that another pushes the first one aside as they work. Ideas you had not even thought of before you began to write may pile onto your paper, and five or six pages into your first draft you may realize that you are going to write about something you did not imagine when you started. 44 If such a revelation comes, be grateful and accept it. But don’t imme- diately tear up or erase your draft and start all over again. Make yourself keep on writing, developing these new ideas as they come. If you suddenly start all over again, you may break the train of thought that has given you the new topic. Let your thoughts follow your new thesis, sailing on that tack until the wind changes. 55 When you have said everything you can say in this draft, print it out if you are working on a computer. Get up from your desk and go sit in a chair somewhere else to read it without correcting anything. Then put it aside, preferably overnight. If possible, read your rough draft just before you go to sleep. Many psychological tests have shown that our minds organize and create while we sleep if we pack them full before bedtime. Study a draft just before sleep, and you may discover new ideas in the morning. 66 Be willing to make radical changes in your second draft. If your thesis changed while you were writing your first draft, you will base your second draft on this new subject. Even if your thesis has not changed, you may need to shift paragraphs around, eliminate paragraphs, or add new ones. Inexperienced writers often suppose that revising a paper means changing only a word or two or adding a sentence or two. This kind of editing is part of the writing process, but it is not the most important part. The most important part of rewriting is a willingness to turn the paper upside down, to shake out of it those ideas that interest you most, to set them in a form where they will interest the reader, too.

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I mentioned earlier that some writers cut up their first drafts with 77 a pair of scissors. They toss some paragraphs into the trash; others they paste up with rubber cement in the order that seems most logical and coherent. Afterward they type the whole thing through again, smoothing out the transitions, adding new material, getting new ideas as they work. The translation of the first draft into the second nearly always involves radical cutting and shifting around. Now and then you may firmly fix the order of your thoughts in your first draft, but I find that the order of my essays is seldom established until the second draft. With the advent of computers the shifting around of parts of the 88 essays has become easy. We can cut and paste electronically with a few strokes of the keyboard. We can also make back-up copies of our earlier drafts so we can go back to them if we wish. But as I said earlier, computers do not remove from us the necessity to think hard about revising. Always be firm enough with yourself to cut out thoughts or stories 99 that have nothing to do with your thesis, even if they are interesting. Cutting is the supreme test of a writer. You may create a smashing paragraph or sentence only to discover later that it does not help you make your point. You may develop six or seven examples to illustrate a point and discover you need only one. Now and then you may digress a little. If you digress too often or 1010 too far, readers will not follow you unless your facts, your thoughts, and your style are so compelling that they are somehow driven to follow you. Not many writers can pull such digressions off, and most editors will cut out the digressions even when they are interesting. In our hur- ried and harried time, most readers get impatient with the rambling scenic route. They want to take the most direct way to their destination. To appeal to most of them, you must cut things that do not apply to your main argument. In your third draft, you can sharpen sentences, add information here 1111 and there, cut some things, and attend to other details to heighten the force of your writing. In the third draft, writing becomes a lot of fun (for most of us). By then you have usually decided what you want to say. You can now play a bit, finding just the right word, choosing just the right sentence form, compressing here, expanding there. I find it helpful to put a printed draft down beside my keyboard and 1212 type the whole thing through again as a final draft, letting all the words run through my mind and fingers one more time rather than merely delet- ing and inserting on the computer screen. I wrote four drafts of the first edition of this book; I have preserved the final draft of that edition on computer diskettes. But I am writing this draft by propping the first edition up here beside me and typing it all over again. By comparing the first draft and the second draft, one can see how many changes I have made, most of them unforeseen until I sat down here to work.

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1313 I have outlined here my own writing process. It works for me. You must find the process that works for you. It may be different from mine. A friend tells me that his writing process consists of writing a sentence, agonizing over it, walking around the room, thinking, sitting down, and writing the next sentence. He does not revise very much. I think it unnec- essarily painful to bleed out prose that way, but he bleeds out enough to write what he needs to write. Several of my friends tell me they cannot compose at a typewriter; they must first write with a pencil on a yellow pad. These are the people most likely to cut up their drafts with scissors and paste them together in a different form. They also tend to be older. Most young writers are learning to compose at a keyboard, and they cannot imagine another way to write. Neither can I—though on occasion yet I go back to my pencil for pages at a time. 1414 The main thing is to keep at it. B. F. Skinner has pointed out that if you write only fifty words a night, you will produce a good-sized book every two or three years. That’s not a bad record for any writer. William Faulkner outlined the plot of his Nobel Prize–winning novel A Fable on a wall inside his house near Oxford, Mississippi. You can see it there to this day. Once he got the outline on the wall, he sat down with his typewriter and wrote, following the outline to the end. If writing an outline on a kitchen wall does the trick for you, do it. You can always repaint the wall if you must. 1515 Think of writing as a process making its way toward a product— sometimes painfully. Don’t imagine you must know everything you are going to say before you begin. Don’t demean yourself and insult your readers by letting your first draft be your final draft. Don’t imagine that writing is easy or that you can do it without spending time on it. And don’t let anything stand in your way of doing it. Let your house get messy. Leave your magazines unread and your mail unanswered. Put off getting up for a drink of water or a cup of tea. (Never mix alcohol with your writing; true, lots of writers have become alcoholics, but it has not helped their writing.) Don’t make a telephone call. Don’t straighten up your desk. Sit down and write. And write, and write, and write.

1988

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Content a. Marius advises using a list outline, but he cautions us not to follow it slavishly. Why not? b. “Cutting is the supreme test of a writer,” the author tells us in paragraph 9. What does he mean?

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c. How is rewriting different from simple editing? d. In what way is writing the second draft different from writing the first? In what way is writing the third draft different from writing the second? e. How does Marius’s suggested process compare with the way you usually write a paper? Which of his suggestions have you tried with success? Which without success? Which suggestions might you try for your next paper? f. Are there any suggestions in “Writing Drafts” that you disagree with? What is the basis of your disagreement?

Strategy and Style g. The author’s personal voice can be heard clearly and distinctly throughout this selection. Is this subjective approach appropriate to writing that instructs? h. If the writing process Marius follows may not work for you, why does he explain that process in careful detail? i. Marius draws on several metaphors to help him describe the drafting process. One is the sailing metaphor at the end of paragraph 4: “Let your thoughts follow your new thesis, sailing on that tack until the wind changes.” What connection does he want us to see between writing and sailing? What other metaphors can you find in the essay? j. How does including personal experience, as in paragraph 13, help the author achieve his purposes? Why does he make reference to the experiences of well-known writers such as B. F. Skinner and William Faulkner? k. Marius writes directly to you, the student. What was your reaction to this technique when you first read the essay? Why did he choose this technique?

ENGAGING THE TEXT

a. Quickly, and without looking back at Marius’s essay, list the steps he suggests in writing drafts. Check what you have written against Marius’s essay. b. What piece of advice in “Writing Drafts” did you find most helpful? In what way do you think it will help you improve your writing?

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING

a. Outline your own writing process. You may want to use as an example the last academic paper you wrote. Then, roughly following Marius’s essay as a model, describe your ideal process for writing papers. As you complete this assignment, keep in mind techniques and practices you might try out with your next academic paper.

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b. Write an essay similar to Marius’s in which you put forth a set of sequenced suggestions for doing something other than writing drafts for an academic paper. The task you explain could be another kind of writing—poetry or short stories, for instance—or it might be any activity that people often find intimidating. Either way, make the activity seem both unintimidating and fruitfully challenging. c. Marius explains how to draft an essay. But what about other parts of the writing process? Research the process of writing by reading further in Marius’s The Writer’s Companion or in the other works mentioned in the short biography preceding “Writing Drafts.” However, focus on a stage in the writing process other than drafting. For example, read about how to gather information, to revise, or to edit/proofread. Then do some more research by consulting the works of composition experts such as Peter Elbow, William Zinsser, and Donald Murray. You can also find information on the Web sites of college and university writing centers. Turn your notes into instructions that will help a fellow student learn how to complete the stage of the writing process you are explaining.

Marius and His Works “Richard Marius (1933–1999)” ( http://oneweb.utc.edu/~tnwriter/authors/ marius.r.html ). “Richard Marius, Former Director of Expository Writing Program, Dies” ( http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/11.11/Marius.html ). Both sites provide insight into the life and works of the author.

The Writing Process Marius, Richard. The Writer’s Companion. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994. Zinsser, William. On Writing Well . New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Alone on the Hilltop John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes

Richard Erdoes (b. 1912) writes extensively on the American West. Born in Germany, Erdoes immigrated to the United States, where he first made his living as a photographer and illustrator. Among his many books are The Sun Dance People: The Plains Indians

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(1972), The Rain Dance People: The Pueblo Indians (1976), Tales of the American West (1998), and Thunderwoman: A Mythic Novel of the Pueblos (1999). In 1967, Erdoes met John (Fire) Lame Deer (1903–1976) while both were participating in a march led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A Lakota Sioux, Lame Deer was born in South Dakota, but he traveled around the country, working as a rodeo clown, a tribal police officer, a sign painter, a bootlegger, and a sheepherder. At age 16, he had a spiritual experience as part of his training as a wicasa wakan, or Sioux holy man. However, it was only after he had left the U.S. Army, which he joined in 1942, that Lame Deer began to pursue his training more vigorously in a lifelong quest to find his Sioux identity. One of his major goals was to preserve as much as he could of his native culture, but Lame Deer had had little formal education. Therefore, he persuaded Erdoes to coauthor a book on the culture of the Lakota Sioux. That book was to become Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions (1971), from which “Alone on the Hilltop” is taken. This essay leads us through the process that a young Lakotan would undertake during his hanblechia, or vision-seeking, a physical and spiritual trial essential to his training as a “healer, carrying on the ancient ways of the Sioux nation.”

I was all alone on the hilltop. I sat there in the vision pit, a hole dug into 11 the hill, my arms hugging my knees as I watched old man Chest, the medicine man who had brought me there, disappear far down in the val- ley. He was just a moving black dot among the pines, and soon he was gone altogether. Now I was all by myself, left on the hilltop for four days and nights 22 without food or water until he came back for me. You know, we Indians are not like some white folks—a man and a wife, two children, and one baby sitter who watches the TV set while the parents are out visiting somewhere. Indian children are never alone. They are always surrounded by 33 grandparents, uncles, cousins, relatives of all kinds, who fondle the kids, sing to them, tell them stories. If the parents go someplace, the kids go along. But here I was, crouched in my vision pit, left alone by myself for 44 the first time in my life. I was sixteen then, still had my boy’s name and, let me tell you, I was scared. I was shivering and not only from the cold. The nearest human being was many miles away, and four days and nights is a long, long time. Of course, when it was all over, I would no longer be a boy, but a man. I would have had my vision. I would be given a man’s name. Sioux men are not afraid to endure hunger, thirst and loneliness, 55 and I was only ninety-six hours away from being a man. The thought was comforting. Comforting, too, was the warmth of the star blanket which old man Chest had wrapped around me to cover my nakedness. My grandmother had made it especially for this, my first hanblechia , my first vision-seeking. It was a beautifully designed quilt, white with a large morning star made of many pieces of brightly colored cloth.

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That star was so big it covered most of the blanket. If Waken Tanka, the Great Spirit, would give me the vision and the power, I would become a medicine man and perform many ceremonies wrapped in that quilt. I am an old man now and many times a grandfather, but I still have that star blanket my grandmother made for me. I treasure it; some day I shall be buried in it. 66 The medicine man had also left a peace pipe with me, together with a bag of kinnickinnick —our kind of tobacco made of red willow bark. This pipe was even more of a friend to me than my star blanket. To us the pipe is like an open Bible. White people need a church house, a preacher and a pipe organ to get into a praying mood. There are so many things to dis- tract you: who else is in the church, whether the other people notice that you have come, the pictures on the wall, the sermon, how much money you should give and did you bring it with you. We think you can’t have a vision that way. 77 For us Indians there is just the pipe, the earth we sit on and the open sky. The spirit is everywhere. Sometimes it shows itself through an animal, a bird or some trees and hills. Sometimes it speaks from the Badlands, a stone, or even from the water. That smoke from the peace pipe, it goes straight up to the spirit world. But this is a two-way thing. Power flows down to us through that smoke, through the pipe stem. You feel that power as you hold your pipe; it moves from the pipe right into your body. It makes your hair stand up. That pipe is not just a thing; it is alive. Smoking this pipe would make me feel good and help me to get rid of my fears. 88 As I ran my fingers along its bowl of smooth red pipestone, red like the blood of my people, I no longer felt scared. That pipe had belonged to my father and to his father before him. It would someday pass to my son and, through him, to my grandchildren. As long as we had the pipe there would be a Sioux nation. As I fingered the pipe, touched it, felt its smooth- ness that came from long use, I sensed that my forefathers who had once smoked this pipe were with me on the hill, right in the vision pit. I was no longer alone. 99 Besides the pipe the medicine man had also given me a gourd. In it were forty small squares of flesh which my grandmother had cut from her arm with a razor blade. I had seen her do it. Blood had been stream- ing down from her shoulder to her elbow as she carefully put down each piece of skin on a handkerchief, anxious not to lose a single one. It would have made those anthropologists mad. Imagine, performing such an ancient ceremony with a razor blade instead of a flint knife! To me it did not matter. Someone dear to me had undergone pain, given me something of herself, part of her body, to help me pray and make me stronghearted. How could I be afraid with so many people—living and dead—helping me?

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One thing still worried me. I wanted to become a medicine man, a 1010 yuwipi, a healer carrying on the ancient ways of the Sioux nation. But you cannot learn to be a medicine man like a white man going to medical school. An old holy man can teach you about herbs and the right ways to perform a ceremony where everything must be in its proper place, where every move, every word has its own, special meaning. These things you can learn—like spelling, like training a horse. But by themselves these things mean nothing. Without the vision and the power this learning will do no good. It would not make me a medicine man. What if I failed, if I had no vision? Or if I dreamed of the Thunder 1111 Beings, or lightning struck the hill? That would make me at once into a heyoka, a contrarywise, an upside-down man, a clown. “You’ll know it, if you get the power,” my Uncle Chest had told me. “If you are not given it, you won’t lie about it, you won’t pretend. That would kill you, or kill somebody close to you, somebody you love.” Night was coming on. I was still lightheaded and dizzy from my first 1212 sweat bath in which I had purified myself before going up the hill. I had never been in a sweat lodge before. I had sat in the little beehive-shaped hut made of bent willow branches and covered with blankets to keep the heat in. Old Chest and three other medicine men had been in the lodge with me. I had my back against the wall, edging as far away as I could from the red-hot stones glowing in the center. As Chest poured water over the rocks, hissing white steam enveloped me and filled my lungs. I thought the heat would kill me, burn the eyelids off my face! But right in the middle of all this swirling steam I heard Chest singing. So it couldn’t be all that bad. I did not cry out “All my relatives!”—which would have made him open the flap of the sweat lodge to let in some cool air—and I was proud of this. I heard him praying for me: “Oh, holy rocks, we receive your white breath, the steam. It is the breath of life. Let this young boy inhale it. Make him strong.” The sweat bath had prepared me for my vision-seeking. Even now, 1313 an hour later, my skin still tingled. But it seemed to have made my brains empty. Maybe that was good, plenty of room for new insights. Darkness had fallen upon the hill. I knew that hanhepiwi had risen, the 1414 night sun, which is what we call the moon. Huddled in my narrow cave, I did not see it. Blackness was wrapped around me like a velvet cloth. It seemed to cut me off from the outside world, even from my own body. It made me listen to the voices within me. I thought of my forefathers who had crouched on this hill before me, because the medicine men in my family had chosen this spot for a place of meditation and vision-seeking ever since the day they had crossed the Missouri to hunt for buffalo in the White River country some two hundred years ago. I thought that I could sense their presence right through the earth I was leaning against. I could feel them entering my body, feel them stirring in my mind and heart.

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1515 Sounds came to me through the darkness: the cries of the wind, the whisper of the trees, the voices of nature, animal sounds, the hooting of an owl. Suddenly I felt an overwhelming presence. Down there with me in my cramped hole was a big bird. The pit was only as wide as myself, and I was a skinny boy, but that huge bird was flying around me as if he had the whole sky to himself. I could hear his cries, sometimes near and sometimes far, far away. I felt feathers or a wing touching my back and head. This feeling was so overwhelming that it was just too much for me. I trembled and my bones turned to ice. I grasped the rattle with the forty pieces of my grandmother’s flesh. It also had many little stones in it, tiny fossils picked up from an ant heap. Ants collect them. Nobody knows why. These little stones are supposed to have a power in them. I shook the rattle and it made a soothing sound, like rain falling on rock. It was talking to me, but it did not calm my fears. I took the sacred pipe in my other hand and began to sing and pray: “Tunkashila, grandfather spirit, help me.” But this did not help. I don’t know what got into me, but I was no longer myself. I started to cry. Crying, even my voice was different. I sounded like an older man, I couldn’t even recognize this strange voice. I used long-ago words in my prayer, words no longer used nowadays. I tried to wipe away my tears, but they wouldn’t stop. In the end I just pulled that quilt over me, rolled myself up in it. Still I felt the bird wings touching me. 1616 Slowly I perceived that a voice was trying to tell me something. It was a bird cry, but I tell you, I began to understand some of it. That happens sometimes. I know a lady who had a butterfly sitting on her shoulder. That butterfly told her things. This made her become a great medicine woman. 1717 I heard a human voice too, strange and high-pitched, a voice which could not come from an ordinary, living being. All at once I was way up there with the birds. The hill with the vision pit was way above everything. I could look down even on the stars, and the moon was close to my left side. It seemed as though the earth and the stars were moving below me. A voice said, “You are sacrificing yourself here to be a medicine man. In time you will be one. You will teach other medicine men. We are the fowl people, the winged ones, the eagles and the owls. We are a nation and you shall be our brother. You will never kill or harm any one of us. You are going to understand us whenever you come to seek a vision here on this hill. You will learn about herbs and roots, and you will heal people. You will ask them for nothing in return. A man’s life is short. Make yours a worthy one.” 1818 I felt that these voices were good, and slowly my fear left me. I had lost all sense of time. I did not know whether it was day or night. I was asleep, yet wide awake. Then I saw a shape before me. It rose from the darkness and the swirling fog which penetrated my earth hole. I saw that this was my great-grandfather, Tahca Ushte, Lame Deer, old man chief of the Minneconjou. I could see the blood dripping from my

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great-grandfather’s chest where a white soldier had shot him. I under- stood that my great-grandfather wished me to take his name. This made me glad beyond words. We Sioux believe that there is something within us that controls us, 1919 something like a second person almost. We call it nagi , what other people might call soul, spirit or essence. One can’t see it, feel it or taste it, but that time on the hill—and only that once—I knew it was there inside of me. Then I felt the power surge through me like a flood. I cannot describe it, but it filled all of me. Now I knew for sure that I would become a wicasa wakan, a medicine man. Again I wept, this time with happiness. I didn’t know how long I had been up there on that hill—one minute 2020 or a lifetime. I felt a hand on my shoulder gently shaking me. It was old man Chest, who had come for me. He told me that I had been in the vision pit four days and four nights and that it was time to come down. He would give me something to eat and water to drink and then I was to tell him everything that had happened to me during my hanblechia . He would interpret my visions for me. He told me that the vision pit had changed me in a way that I would not be able to understand at that time. He told me also that I was no longer a boy, that I was a man now. I was Lame Deer.

1972

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Content a. At the end of the trial, the narrator tells us that his name has become “Lame Deer.” What is the purpose of the ordeal he has just gone through? b. Why does the narrator describe the blanket and the peace pipe that the medicine man leaves him? What function do they serve in the ceremony? c. What does Lame Deer mean when, in paragraph 8, he says, “As long as we had the pipe there would be a Sioux nation”? d. What comparison is being made between Native American spirituality and white spirituality in paragraph 6? Is this comparison valid? e. What does the gourd contain, and why is this instrument important to the trial the boy undergoes? f. In what ways does the sweat bath prepare the boy for his vision- seeking? g. If this selection is intended to help keep alive elements of the ancient Sioux culture, what roles do Lame Deer’s great-grandfather and his grandmother play in achieving that goal?

bus92577_ch03.indd 101 1/7/09 5:32:43 PM 102 Chapter 3 Process Analysis Strategy and Style h. Why do the authors include Sioux words in this essay? Why don’t they simply use their English equivalents? i. Although this is clearly a piece of process analysis, it is unlike most pieces of scientific writing that we read. For one thing, it uses a great many figures of speech. Identify a few of these. j. Besides process and contrast, what other methods of development does this essay employ? k. Judging from the lack of unfamiliar vocabulary, the style of this essay is simple and direct. What accounts for that? Consider the interaction of Lame Deer and Erdoes as they planned and wrote Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions .

ENGAGING THE TEXT

a. Write a summary of the “steps” that we are told about in this initiation ceremony. b. At various points in the text, Lame Deer tells us about the emotions running through him as he went through his trial. Find these points and explain what they tell us about Lame Deer the boy and Lame Deer the man.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING

a. Lame Deer explains a Lakota coming-of-age ritual. However, many cultures have such rituals. Think of a trial, a ceremony, or a ritual that you or someone you know went through to mark a transition from childhood to adulthood. Explain the process you or your subject went through step-by-step. Like the authors of “Alone on the Hilltop,” record your emotional reactions and explain the significance of important aspects of the experience to your culture. b. Recall what you wrote in response to the items under Engaging the Text, especially item b. Then, write an essay in which you analyze the character of the speaker in “Alone on the Hilltop.” Quote from and make specific reference to the text to support your analysis. c. Write a research paper in which you contrast what a child of one culture must go through to be considered an adult with what a child in another culture must go through to achieve the same goal. (Of course, one of these cultures might be your own.) To focus your essay, consider concentrating on a particular process, such as the training one must go through to become self-sufficient or the ritual involved in finding a mate. If appropriate, point out similarities as well.

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The Authors and Their Works Erdoes, Richard. The Sun Dance People: The Plains Indians, Their Past and Present . New York: Random House, 1972. Erdoes, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz, Eds. American Indian Myths and Legends . New York: Pantheon, 1984. Lame Deer, John (Fire), and Richard Erdoes. Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions . New York: Washington Square Press, 1972. “Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions” ( http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/ lamedeer.html ): Western Michigan University site that provides an overview of the book and links to several important sites on Native American culture.

On Native American Culture Forbes, Jack D. “Indigenous Americans: Spirituality and Ecos.” American Academy of Arts and Sciences ( http://www.amacad.org/publications/ fall2001/forbes.aspx ): A valuable bibliography. “Native American Sites” (http:/ /www.nativeculturelinks.com/indians.html): Home page of the American Indian Library Association with links to many valuable resources. “Native American Spirituality” ( http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia .edu/nrms/naspirit.html ).

The Serpents of Paradise Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) was born in Home, Pennsylvania. After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, he took a B.A. and an M.A. at the University of New Mexico. He also studied at the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University. For about 25 years, Abbey was a national park ranger. It was this experience that provided him with materials for his environmental writings, which include Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984), as well as for his fiction. His novels include Jonathan Troy (1954), Black Sun (1971), and The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). His most famous work, which continues to receive widespread acclaim, is Desert Solitaire (1968), a collection of autobiographical essays, including “The Serpents of Paradise,” on nature and the environment. Throughout this book, Abbey relies on his experiences as a park ranger in Arches National Monument in southeastern Utah. Among Abbey’s most important themes are (1) the exploitation of a pristine environment by tourists and (2) our kinship to the animal world. Both of these themes, especially the second, are apparent in “The Serpents of Paradise.”

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11 The April mornings are bright, clear and calm. Not until the afternoon does the wind begin to blow, raising dust and sand in funnelshaped twist- ers that spin across the desert briefly, like dancers, and then collapse— whirlwinds from which issue no voice or word except the forlorn moan of the elements under stress. After the reconnoitering dust-devils comes the real, the serious wind, the voice of the desert rising to a demented howl and blotting out sky and sun behind yellow clouds of dust, sand, confusion, embattled birds, last year’s scrub-oak leaves, pollen, the husks of locusts, bark of juniper. . . . 22 Time of the red eye, the sore and bloody nostril, the sand-pitted wind- shield, if one is foolish enough to drive his car into such a storm. Time to sit indoors and continue that letter which is never finished—while the fine dust forms neat little windrows under the edge of the door and on the windowsills. Yet the springtime winds are as much a part of the canyon country as the silence and the glamorous distances; you learn, after a number of years, to love them also. 33 The mornings therefore, as I started to say and meant to say, are all the sweeter in the knowledge of what the afternoon is likely to bring. Before beginning the morning chores I like to sit on the sill of my doorway, bare feet planted on the bare ground and a mug of hot coffee in hand, facing the sunrise. The air is gelid, not far above freezing, but the butane heater inside the trailer keeps my back warm, the rising sun warms the front, and the coffee warms the interior. 44 Perhaps this is the loveliest hour of the day, though it’s hard to choose. Much depends on the season. In midsummer the sweetest hour begins at sundown, after the awful heat of the afternoon. But now, in April, we’ll take the opposite, that hour beginning with the sunrise. The birds, returning from wherever they go in winter, seem inclined to agree. The pinyon jays are whirling in garrulous, gregarious flocks from one stunted-tree to the next and back again, erratic exuberant games without any apparent practical function. A few big ravens hang around and croak harsh clanking statements of smug satisfaction from the rimrock, lifting their greasy wings now and then to probe for lice. I can hear but seldom see the canyon wrens singing their distinctive song from somewhere up on the cliffs: a flutelike descent—never ascent—of the whole-tone scale. Staking out new nesting claims, I understand. Also invisible but invari- ably present at some indefinable distance are the mourning doves whose plaintive call suggests irresistibly a kind of seeking-out, the attempt by separated souls to restore a lost communion: 55 Hello . . . they seem to cry, who . . . are . . . you? 66 And the reply from a different quarter. Hello . . . (pause) where . . . are . . . you? 77 No doubt this line of analogy must be rejected. It’s foolish and unfair to impute to the doves, with serious concerns of their own, an interest in

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questions more appropriate to their human-kin. Yet their song, if not a mating call or a warning, must be what it sounds like, a brooding meditation on space, on solitude. The game. Other birds, silent, which I have not yet learned to identify, are 88 also lurking in the vicinity, watching me. What the ornithologist terms l.g.b.’s—little gray birds—they flit about from point to point on noiseless wings, their origins obscure. As mentioned before, I share the housetrailer with a number of mice. 99 I don’t know how many but apparently only a few, perhaps a single family. They don’t disturb me and are welcome to my crumbs and leavings. Where they came from, how they got into the trailer, how they survived before my arrival (for the trailer had been locked up for six months), these are puzzling matters I am not prepared to resolve. My only reservation concerning the mice is that they do attract rattlesnakes. I’m sitting on my doorstep early one morning, facing the sun as 1010 usual, drinking coffee, when I happen to look down and see almost between my bare feet, only a couple of inches to the rear of my heels, the very thing I had in mind. No mistaking that wedgelike head, that tip of horny segmented tail peeping out of the coils. He’s under the doorstep and in the shade where the ground and air remain very cold. In his sluggish condition he’s not likely to strike unless I rouse him by some careless move of my own. There’s a revolver inside the trailer, a huge British Webley .45, loaded, 1111 but it’s out of reach. Even if I had it in my hands I’d hesitate to blast a fellow creature at such close range, shooting between my own legs at a living target flat on solid rock thirty inches away. It would be like murder; and where would I set my coffee? My cherry-wood walking stick leans against the trailerhouse wall only a few feet away, but I’m afraid that in leaning over for it I might stir up the rattler or spill some hot coffee on his scales. Other considerations come to mind. Arches National Monument is 1212 meant to be among other things a sanctuary for wildlife—for all forms of wildlife. It is my duty as a park ranger to protect, preserve and defend all living things within the park boundaries, making no exceptions. Even if this were not the case I have personal convictions to uphold. Ideals, you might say. I prefer not to kill animals. I’m a humanist; I’d rather kill a man than a snake. What to do. I drink some more coffee and study the dormant reptile at 1313 my heels. It is not after all the mighty diamondback, Crotalus atrox, I’m con- fronted with but a smaller species known locally as the horny rattler or more precisely as the Faded Midget. An insulting name for a rattlesnake, which may explain the Faded Midget’s alleged bad temper. But the name is apt: he is small and dusty-looking, with a little knob above each eye—the horns. His bite, though temporarily disabling, would not likely kill a full-grown

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man in normal health. Even so I don’t really want him around. Am I to be compelled to put on boots or shoes every time I wish to step outside? The scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, and black widows are nuisance enough. 1414 I finish my coffee, lean back and swing my feet up and inside the doorway of the trailer. At once there is a buzzing sound from below and the rattler lifts his head from his coils, eyes brightening, and extends his narrow black tongue to test the air. 1515 After thawing out my boots over the gas flame I pull them on and come back to the doorway. My visitor is still waiting beneath the doorstep, basking in the sun, fully alert. The trailerhouse has two doors. I leave by the other and get a long-handled spade out of the bed of the govern- ment pickup. With this tool I scoop the snake into the open. He strikes; I can hear the click of the fangs against steel, see the strain of venom. He wants to stand and fight, but I am patient; I insist on herding him well away from the trailer. On guard, head aloft—that evil slit-eyed weav- ing head shaped like the ace of spades—tail whirring, the rattler slithers sideways, retreating slowly before me until he reaches the shelter of a sandstone slab. He backs under it. 1616 You better stay there, cousin, I warn him; if I catch you around the trailer again I’ll chop your head off. 1717 A week later he comes back. If not him, his twin brother. I spot him one morning under the trailer near the kitchen drain, waiting for a mouse. I have to keep my promise. 1818 This won’t do. If there are midget rattlers in the area there may be diamondbacks too—five, six or seven feet long, thick as a man’s wrist, dangerous. I don’t want them camping under my home. It looks as though I’ll have to trap the mice. 1919 However, before being forced to take that step I am lucky enough to capture a gopher snake. Burning garbage one morning at the park dump, I see a long slender yellow-brown snake emerge from a mound of old tin cans and plastic picnic plates and take off down the sandy bed of a gulch. There is a burlap sack in the cab of the truck which I carry when plucking Kleenex flowers from the brush and cactus along the road; I grab that and my stick, run after the snake and corner it beneath the exposed roots of a bush. Making sure it’s a gopher snake and not something less useful, I open the neck of the sack and with a great deal of coaxing and prodding get the snake into it. The gopher snake, Drymarchon corais couperi, or bull snake, has a reputation as the enemy of rattlesnakes, destroying or driving them away whenever encountered. 2020 Hoping to domesticate this sleek, handsome and docile reptile, I release him inside the trailerhouse and keep him there for several days. Should I attempt to feed him? I decide against it—let him eat mice. What little water he may need can also be extracted from the flesh of his prey.

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The gopher snake and I get along nicely. During the day he curls 2121 up like a cat in the warm corner behind the heater and at night he goes about his business. The mice, singularly quiet for a change, make themselves scarce. The snake is passive, apparently contented, and makes no resistance when I pick him up with my hands and drape him over an arm or around my neck. When I take him outside into the wind and sunshine his favorite place seems to be inside my shirt, where he wraps himself around my waist and rests on my belt. In this position he sometimes sticks his head out between shirt buttons for a survey of the weather, astonishing and delighting any tourists who may happen to be with me at the time. The scales of a snake are dry and smooth, quite pleasant to the touch. Being a cold-blooded creature, of course, he takes his temperature from that of the immediate environment—in this case my body. We are compatible. From my point of view, friends. After a week of 2222 close association I turn him loose on the warm sandstone at my doorstep and leave for patrol of the park. At noon when I return he is gone. I search everywhere beneath, nearby and inside the trailerhouse, but my companion has disappeared. Has he left the area entirely or is he hiding somewhere close by? At any rate I am troubled no more by rattlesnakes under the door. The snake story is not yet ended. 2323 In the middle of May, about a month after the gopher snake’s disap- 2424 pearance, in the evening of a very hot day, with all the rosy desert cooling like a griddle with the fire turned off, he reappears. This time with a mate. I’m in the stifling heat of the trailer opening a can of beer, bare- 2525 footed, about to go outside and relax after a hard day watching cloud formations. I happen to glance out the little window near the refrigerator and see two gopher snakes on my verandah engaged in what seems to be a kind of ritual dance. Like a living caduceus they wind and unwind about each other in undulant, graceful, perpetual motion, moving slowly across a dome of sandstone. Invisible but tangible as music is the passion which joins them—sexual? combative? both? A shameless voyeur, I stare at the lovers, and then to get a closer view run outside and around the trailer to the back. There I get down on hands and knees and creep toward the dancing snakes, not wanting to frighten or disturb them. I crawl to within six feet of them and stop, flat on my belly, watching from the snake’s-eye level. Obsessed with their ballet, the serpents seem unaware of my presence. The two gopher snakes are nearly identical in length and coloring; 2626 I cannot be certain that either is actually my former household pet. I cannot even be sure that they are male and female, though their per- formance resembles so strongly a pas de deux by formal lovers. They intertwine and separate, glide side by side in perfect congruence, turn

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like mirror images of each other and glide back again, wind and unwind again. This is the basic pattern but there is a variation: at regular inter- vals the snakes elevate their heads, facing one another, as high as they can go, as if each is trying to outreach or overawe the other. Their heads and bodies rise, higher and higher, then topple together and the rite goes on. 2727 I crawl after them, determined to see the whole thing. Suddenly and simultaneously they discover me, prone on my belly a few feet away. The dance stops. After a moment’s pause the two snakes come straight toward me, still in flawless unison, straight toward my face, the forked tongues flickering, their intense wild yellow eyes staring directly into my eyes. For an instant I am paralyzed by wonder; then, stung by a fear too ancient and powerful to overcome I scramble back, rising to my knees. The snakes veer and turn and race away from me in parallel motion, their lean elegant bodies making a soft hissing noise as they slide over the sand and stone. I follow them for a short distance, still plagued by curiosity, before remembering my place and the requirements of common courtesy. For godsake let them go in peace, I tell myself. Wish them luck and (if lovers) innumerable offspring, a life of happily ever after. Not for their sake alone but for your own. 2828 In the long hot days and cool evenings to come I will not see the gopher snakes again. Nevertheless I will feel their presence watching over me like totemic deities, keeping the rattlesnakes far back in the brush where I like them best, cropping off the surplus mouse population, maintaining useful connections with the primeval Sympathy, mutual aid, symbiosis, continuity. 2929 How can I descend to such anthropomorphism? Easily—but is it, in this case, entirely false? Perhaps not. I am not attributing human motives to my snake and bird acquaintances. I recognize that when and where they serve purposes of mine they do so for beautifully selfish reasons of their own. Which is exactly the way it should be. I suggest, however, that it’s a foolish, simple-minded rationalism which denies any form of emotion to all animals but man and his dog. This is no more justified than the Moslems are in denying souls to women. It seems to me possible, even probable, that many of the nonhuman undomesti- cated animals experience emotions unknown to us. What do the coyotes mean when they yodel at the moon? What are the dolphins trying so patiently to tell us? Precisely what did those two enraptured gopher snakes have in mind when they came gliding toward my eyes over the naked sandstone? If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we have all forgotten it.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. . . .

bus92577_ch03.indd 108 1/7/09 5:32:45 PM The Serpents of Paradise Edward Abbey 109

All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret 3030 it were not true. But perhaps it is true. And is the evolutionary line from protozoan to Spinoza any less certain? That also may be true. We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.

1968

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Content a. Abbey’s thesis is obviously that “all living things on earth are kindred.” But how does this process analysis essay develop that idea? Reread paragraphs 28, 29, and 30 for clues. b. What is the purpose of the last line in paragraph 2? c. What analogy is Abbey making between the bird kingdom and human society? d. What is Abbey’s reaction to the rattlesnakes? How does this reaction inform the essay or contribute to its thesis? State that thesis in your own words. e. What is it that causes Abbey to decide he’ll have to trap the mice? f. What does the author mean when, at the end of paragraph 12, he says: “I’m a humanist; I’d rather kill a man than a snake”? Strategy and Style g. This essay seems to explain two processes. Indicate where one ends and the other begins. h. Should the author have explained the second process in a separate essay? Why or why not? i. Where in this essay does Abbey use description? What is the function of such details? j. Why does the author include the Latin (scientific) names for the snakes he encounters?

ENGAGING THE TEXT

a. Abbey makes it clear that he respects the lives of animals. In fact, he considers them part of the same community he inhabits. Find two or three places in the essay where this is apparent and, quoting the text, discuss this idea more fully. b. Near the end of the essay, Abbey quotes from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1888). What do these lines mean, and how are they related to Abbey’s essay? Do they contribute to an appropriate conclusion? How?

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a. In this selection, Abbey explains how he solved a natural problem using natural means. Write an essay in which you explain how you solved a problem having to do with a personal relationship, with someone’s health, with your home, or with anything else without using medicines, chemicals, or any other artificial means. b. After reading N. Scott Momaday’s “Revisiting Sacred Ground” in Chapter 2, write an essay in which you identify similarities between the ways in which Momaday and Abbey envision the connection between humans and animals. If appropriate, point out differences as well. If this assignment doesn’t interest you, find and read another essay by Abbey (you can link to several through “Abbey’s Web” on the Internet—see the items under Read More). Compare Abbey’s comments on the animal world or on nature in general in this other essay with what you read in “The Serpents of Paradise.” c. In recent years, more and more people have adopted the opinion that wild animals have rights. Find two or three sources (in print or on the Internet) that explain this position. Summarize the arguments you find in these sources. Then, find sources written by those who would deny the notion that wild animals have rights. Discuss their position as well. End your essay by stating your own opinion. As always, include internal citations and a works-cited or references list for your sources.

Abbey and His Works Abbey, Edward. The Best of Edward Abbey . San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1986. Abbey, Edward. Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside. New York: Owl Books, 1984. “Abbey’s Web” ( http://www.abbeyweb.net ). Contains a biography, bibliography, texts of articles by Abbey, and related links.

Writings on Nature and the Environment Cooley, John, Ed. Earthly Words: Essays on Contemporary American Nature and Environmental Writers . Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994. “Ecology Hall of Fame” ( http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/ndex.html ): Home page of a project sponsored by EcoTopia/USA. Contains links to works of a number of important environmental writers.

bus92577_ch03.indd 110 1/7/09 5:32:45 PM Chronicles of Ice Gretel Ehrlich 111 Chronicles of Ice Gretel Ehrlich

Born on a ranch near Santa Barbara, California, Gretel Ehrlich (b. 1946) studied at Bennington College and the University of California, later working as a maker of docu- mentary films. Her last film project (1978) was on a Wyoming sheep farm, where she stayed and took up ranching as her day job, devoting the evenings to her new writing career. A great deal of Ehrlich’s work shows a reverence for nature, as is the case with the essay that follows. However, her interests are varied. Her first published work is The Solace of Open Spaces (1984), a book of essays centered on her Wyoming experience. In 1987 she published a novel, Heart Mountain, about a Japanese internment camp during World War II. A second book of essays, Islands, the Universe, and Home appeared in 1991. In 1994 she wrote A Match to the Heart, which discusses the effects of having been struck by lighting, an event that hospitalized her. Ehrlich is an avid traveler, having made trips to the Himalayas, which inspired her to write Questions of Heaven (1994), and to Greenland, about which she wrote This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland (2002). “Chronicles of Ice” is from The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold (2004) . This essay is about a trip to a glacier at the southern end of Argentina, quite near the South Pole. It reflects her concern for the natural world and her fear that human activity is doing it irreversible harm.

A trapped turbulence—as if wind had solidified. Then noise: timpani and 11 a hard crack, the glacier’s internal heat spilling out as an ice stream far below. I’ve come on a bus from El Calafate, Argentina, to visit the World Heritage glacier Perito Moreno, to see its bowls, lips, wombs, fenders, gravelly elbows, ponds, and ice streams, and to learn whatever lessons a glacier has to teach. Some glaciers retreat, some surge, some do both, advancing and retreat- 22 ing even as the climate warms. Perito Moreno is 257 square kilometers across. It advances two meters a day at the center. From where I’m stand- ing, I can look directly down on the glacier’s snout. Two spires tilt forward, their lips touching. They meet head to head, but their bodies are hollow. Sun scours them as they twist toward light. I walk down stairs to a platform that gives me a more intimate view. 33 A row of ice teeth is bent sideways, indicating basal movement. Out of the corner of my eye I see something fall. A spectator gasps. An icy cheekbone crumbles. People come here to see only the falling and failings, not the power it takes for the glacier to stay unified.

A glacier is not static. Snow falls, accretes, and settles until finally 44 its own weight presses it down. The flakes become deformed. They lose coherence and pattern, become something crystalline called firn which then turns to ice. As an ice mountain grows, its weight displaces its bulk

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and it spreads outward, filling whole valleys, hanging off mountains, running toward seas. 55 There are warm glaciers and cold glaciers, depending on latitude and altitude. Cold glaciers don’t slide easily; they’re fixed and frozen to rock. They move like men on stilts—all awkwardness, broken bones of sheared rock. Internal deformation affects flow patterns; melting occurs faster at the margins than in the center. Warm glaciers have internal melt-streams at every level and torrents of water flow out from under the ice at the glacier’s foot. The “sole” of the glacier is close to the melting point and slides easily over rock. Friction creates heat, heat increases sole-melt, slip- periness, and speed. The quasi-liquid surface that results is a disordered layer, a complicated boundary where heat and cold, melting and freezing, play off each other and are inextricably bound, the way madness and san- ity, cacophony and stillness, are. 66 Because ice melts as it moves and moves as it melts, a glacier is always undermining itself. It lives by giving itself away. 77 A glacier balances its gains and losses like a banker. Accumulation has to exceed ablation for a glacier to grow. At the top, snow stacks up and does not melt. Midway down, the area of “mass balance” is where the profits and losses of snow can go either way. Surface melting can mean that water percolates down, refreezes, melts, and freezes again, creating a lens of ice. Below this region of equilibrium, ablation occurs. Profits are lost when the rate of melting exceeds the rate of accumulation. But a glacier will still advance if enough snow falls at the top and stays. . . . 88 A glacier is an archivist and historian. It registers every fluctuation of weather. It saves everything no matter how small or big, including pollen, dust, heavy metals, bugs, and minerals. As snow becomes firn and then ice, oxygen bubbles are trapped in the glacier, providing samples of ancient atmosphere: carbon dioxide and methane. Records of temperatures and levels of atmospheric gases from before industrialization can be compared with those after—a mere 150 years. We can now see that the steady gains in greenhouse gases and air and water temperatures have occurred only since the rise of our smokestack and tailpipe society. 99 A glacier is time incarnate. When we lose a glacier—and we are losing most of them—we lose history, an eye into the past; we lose stories of how living beings evolved, how weather vacillated, why plants and animals died. The retreat and disappearance of glaciers—there are only 160,000 left—means we’re burning libraries and damaging the planet, possibly beyond repair. Bit by bit glacier by glacier, rib by rib, we’re living the Fall. . . .

1010 Twenty thousand years ago temperatures plummeted and ice grew from the top of the world like vines and ground covers. Glaciers sprouted and surged, covering 10 million square miles—more than thirteen times what they cover now. As a result of their worldwide retreat and a global

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decrease in winter snow cover, the albedo effect—the ability of ice and snow to deflect heat back into space—is quickly diminishing. Snow and ice are the Earth’s built-in air conditioner—crucial to the health of the planet. Without winter’s white mantle, Earth will become a heat sponge. As heat escalates, all our sources of fresh water will disappear. Already, warmer temperatures are causing meltwater to stream into 1111 oceans, changing temperature and salinity; sea ice and permafrost are thawing, pulsing methane into the air; seawater is expanding, causing floods and intrusions. Islands are disappearing, and vast human populations in places like Bangladesh are in grave danger. The high-mountain peoples of Peru, Chile, and Bolivia who depend on meltwater from snowpack are at risk; the Inuit cultures in Alaska, Arctic Canada, Siberia, and Greenland that depend on ice for transportation, and live on a diet of marine mammals, could disappear. In temperate climates everywhere, the early onset of spring and the late 1212 arrival of winter are creating ecosystem pandemonium. It is not unreasonable to think that a whole season can become extinct, at least for a time. Winter might last only one day—minor punctuation in a long sentence of heat. Mirages rising from shimmering heat waves would be the only storms. . . .

The bus takes me back to town. I get out near a grove of trees where 1313 loose horses wander. It’s good to be in a place where there are such free- doms. All over the world the life of rocks, ice, mountains, snow, oceans, islands, albatross, sooty gulls, whales, crabs, limpets, and guanaco once flowed up into the bodies of the people who lived in small hunting groups and villages, and out came killer-whale prayers, condor chants, crab feasts, and guanaco songs. Life went where there was food. Food occurred in places of great beauty, and the act of living directly fueled people’s movements, thoughts, and lives. Everything spoke. Everything made a sound—birds, ghosts, animals, 1414 oceans, bogs, rocks, humans, trees, flowers, and rivers—and when they passed each other a third sound occurred. That’s why weather, mountains, and each passing season were so noisy. Song and dance, sex and gratitude, were the season-sensitive ceremonies linking the human psyche to the larger, wild, weather-ridden world. Now, the enterprise we human beings in the “developed world” have 1515 engaged in is almost too darkly insane to contemplate. Our bent has been to “improve” on nature and local culture, which has meant that we’ve reduced the parallel worlds of spirit, imagination, and daily life to a single secularized pile. The process of empire-building is a kind of denigration. Nothing that’s not nuts and bolts and money-making is allowed in. Our can-do optimism and our head-in-the-sand approach to economics—one that takes only profit, and not the biological health of our planet, into account—has left us one-sided.

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1616 When did we begin thinking that weather was something to be rescued from? Why did we trade in our ceremonial lives for the workplace? Is this a natural progression or a hiccup in human civilization that we’ll soon renounce? 1717 I eat at a rustic bar with other travelers. It’s late when night comes, maybe 10:30. In the darkness, Perito Moreno is still calving and moving, grabbing snowflakes, stirring weather, spitting out ice water, and it makes me smile.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Content a. What is the stated purpose of the author’s trip to the Perito Moreno glacier? b. In paragraph 5, Ehrlich contrasts two types of glaciers. Summarize the differences in your own words. c. Explain what Ehrlich is saying in paragraph 6. d. Why does she label the glacier an “archivist” (paragraph 8)? What does she mean by saying that it is “time incarnate” (paragraph 9)? e. Write a sentence that might serve as this essay’s thesis.

Style and Strategy f. Why is the word Fall capitalized in paragraph 9? g. In what ways is this essay typical of process analysis essays? In what ways is it not? h. Find evidence that Ehrlich personifies the glacier. Pick out examples of similes and metaphor. What does Ehrlich’s use of this kind of language tell you about her audience? i. Where in this essay does the author explain causes and effects? Where does she define terms or concepts? j. Is the essay’s conclusion appropriate? Why or why not? What does it tell us about the author’s attitude toward her subject?

ENGAGING THE TEXT

a. In paragraphs 11–16, Ehrlich makes some startling claims. How might you respond to those claims? Are they convincing, or should Ehrlich have developed them in greater detail, perhaps through documented research? b. What is the author driving at in paragraphs 13 and 14? In what way is paragraph 15 a logical follow-up to those ideas?

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a. Write an essay that explains the process by which an environmental problem evolved. You need not write about a global problem as Ehrlich did. Instead pick a “local” problem, one that you know a great deal about. Explain how the lake in a nearby park became polluted; trace the deterioration of a public place where people have littered or drawn graffiti; or write about the destruction wrought by a forest fire due to human negligence. b. Read Momaday’s “Revisiting Sacred Ground” (Chapter 2), Lame Deer and Erdoes’s “Alone on the Hilltop” (Chapter 3), or Abbey’s “The Serpents of Paradise” (Chapter 3). All three of these essays, like “Chronicles of Ice,” appeal to the reader’s respect for the natural world. Write an essay that explains how and to what extent the essay you read delivers a message similar or at least related to the message of Ehrlich’s essay. c. Reread your response to Engaging the Text (item a). (If you have not responded to that prompt, do so now.) Make sure you fully understand what Ehrlich is saying. Then, using library and/or Internet research (check with your instructor to determine appropriate sources of research), write an essay that addresses her opinion. You might disagree, agree, or do some of both.

Gretel Ehrlich and Her Works “Gretel Ehrlich.” Interview with Powells.com (http://www.powells.com/ authors/ehrlich.html). “Gretel Ehrlich.” Gretel Ehrlich Website (http://www.parkcentralwebs .com/GretelEhrlich/default.asp).

Global Warming “Climate Change.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://www .epa.gov/climatechange/). Global Warming: Early Signs. (http://www.climatehotmap.org/index .html): This Web site offers links to other valuable sources.

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