Arne Naess calls our connection to the earth and the natural world ecological identity.  How people relate to nature is an important aspect of cultural identity as well.  The range of experience defines differences not only among individuals but among nations.  Why take ESL outdoors?  Personal relationships with nature enhance the student experience, increase international understanding, provide talking points for cultural differences, and may even lead to more environmentally responsible behavior by us all.

The suggested readings vary in difficulty.  Flesch Reading Ease scores range from 30 to 70.  Flesh-Kincaid, Gunning-Fog, and SMOG  reading levels average out to grades  9-13.  The reading selections are short, ranging from one page to one chapter.  While the materials have been tailored for students on our Colorado campus, the format could be adapted for other parts of the country.  

Abbey, Edward.  "Lake Havasu." The Best of Edward Abbey.  Sierra Club paperback library. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988. Pages 54-64.

Edward Abbey was on his way to Los Angeles when he discovered Lake Havasu near the Grand Canyon.  Fifteen years later, he had still not made it to Los Angeles.  Discover with Abbey the charm of canyon country.

Anderson, Lorraine, editor. Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose and Poetry About Nature. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

Sisters is a wonderful anthology of poems, short stories, and essays.  Any or all of these selections are recommended for ESL outdoors.

Baca, Jimmy S. Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande. New York: New Directions Pub, 2004. Print. Page 40.

"The river never taught me to assume, but to watch, listen, honor the path it travels…"  Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca celebrates nature, creativity, love, and spirit on the banks of the Rio Grande.

Barr, Nevada. Blood Lure. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001.  Pages 288-292.

The novel opens on Ranger Anna Pigeon whipping up a delightfully disgusting batch of bear bait. Anna has come to Glacier National Peace Park on the border of Canada to study grizzlies and finds herself in the midst of a series of bear attacks that leave her struggling to re-evaluate her own view of nature.  In this excerpt Anna meets a grizzly and experiences the power of nature at first hand.

Bass, Rick. "The Canoeists."  The Lives of Rocks: Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2006. Pages 62-66.

The Canoeists is a story of lyric simplicity. A day on the river teaches that the best things in life are free.

Hobbs, Will. Downriver. New York: Atheneum, 1991. Pages 11-23.

In this excerpt, a group of rash young climbers confront nature and their own fears during an electrical storm on infamous Storm King Mountain.

 Hillerman, Tony. Coyote Waits. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Pages 1-9.

A character in its own right, the great Navajo Reservation, the Rez as it is known, is the heart and soul of Tony Hillerman’s novels.  Larger than some states and many foreign countries, the Rez is a harshly beautiful landscape where humans have learned to tread lightly.

Johnson, Kirk R., and Ray Troll. Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway: An Epoch Tale of a Scientist and an Artist on the Ultimate 5,000-Mile Paleo Road Trip. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub, 2007. Page 63.

The wonderful, whimsical art of Ray Troll aids comprehension for non-native readers.  Kirk Johnson’s clear, entertaining prose makes science accessible to all. The road trip diary blends slices of modern American life with prehistoric geology, giving international students a truly unique view of America.  The very short selection on page 63 teaches amateur fossil hunters how to find roadside dinosaur tracks.

"Women Are Venturesome Creatures!"  Ketchum, Liza. Into a New Country: Eight Remarkable Women of the West. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.Pages 8-24.

Susan Shelby Magoffin was one of the first white women to travel the Santa Fe Trail.  In 1846 the newly-wed, pregnant Susan left St. Louis for the western frontier.  The diary Susan left us gives modern readers an invaluable portrait of a woman’s life in the wilderness.

Kunkel, Benjamin. "Colorado." Weiland, Matt, and Sean Wilsey, editors. State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. New York, NY: Ecco, 2008. Pages 57-65.

Ben Kunkel shares a life-long love affair with the Centennial State without romanticizing the contrasting and contradictory aspects of life beyond the urban corridor.  The Religious Right, Wiccans, Buddhists, gunslingers, missionaries, Mormons, hippies, nativists, immigrants and the KKK populate this essay that provides international students with a modern history of the state circa 1950 to the present.

Lee, Katie.  "Sandstone Seduction". Anderson, Lorraine, editor. Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose and Poetry About Nature. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.Pages 62-65.

Katie Lee fell in love with Glen Canyon on the Colorado River in 1954, a decade before the canyon was drowned by the waters of Lake Powell.  Come share her memories of that vanished time and place.

Pynn, Larry.  "Winter of the Devil Bear."   Last Stands: A Journey Through North America’s Vanishing Ancient Rainforests. Corvallis, Or: Oregon State University Press, 2000. Pages 43-55.

Terrible Ted was a wolverine with an attitude.  With great difficulty researchers fitted the cantankerous beast with a radio collar.  Relieved to see Ted’s furry backside disappearing into the forest, little did the experts know they would soon meet Ted again and that he would become a legend of the wilderness.

Ragsdale, John G. Camper’s Guide to Outdoor Cooking: Everything from Fires to Fixin’s. Houston: Gulf, 1998. Pages 47-53.

The illustrated chapter on trail cooking provides the new outdoors-person with directions for making cheap and inventive cook stoves and utensils from a surprising array of common, recycled, and found objects. 

Stafford,Melanie.  "Spring at Gem Lake." Kailey, Matt. Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices. Boulder, Colo: Johnson Books, 2007. Pages 71-72.

Melanie Stafford has been writing poetry since she could hold a pen. Gem Lake distills the essence of the Rocky Mountains into a single page.

Vowell, Sarah. "The Strenuous Life." The Partly Cloudy Patriot. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Pages 181-196.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot is an insightful and funny collection of personal stories based on the author’s travels through America and across the bumpy roads of her own life.  "The Strenuous Life" is a portrait of life in the Dakotas. 

For discussion guides and materials see http://guides.auraria.edu/wild

These government and civic resources are available from the App Store or directly from the agency where indicated.

BEST FREE APPS

All the Countries—Get facts about population, the economy, literacy and more

OECD Factbook—100 economic indicators for 30 countries—population, migration, macroeconomic trends, and more.

Best Dollar Apps

U.S. Historical Documents—200 famous documents in full text—includes the Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, U.S. Constitution, 9-11 documents, and more.  $0.99

World Factbook—An amazing array of country data for nations around the world. $0.99

Manual for the United States—A must for students of history or political science. $0.99

Congress Members 1.0–The Congress Members app shows detailed biographical information on the current members of the US Senate and House of Representatives. For each politician there is a picture and all kinds of useful information such as origin, political party, residence, occupation, religion, represented state, a biographic description, political views, etc.  $0.99

Census.gov

These are not “Apps” per se, but the data is suitable for downloading to mobile devices.

Quick Facts–Quick, easy access to facts about people, business, and geography http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/

The County and City Data Book is the most comprehensive source of information about the individual counties and cities in the United States. http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/ccdb07.html

2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States  http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/  The Abstract contains an astounding array of facts on Transportation, population, the economy, health, education, crime and more.  Tables and graphs and suitable for downloading to mobile devices.

A colleague of mine just published and presented her scholarly reference tome after ten years of meticulous research, fact checking, and revision.  Yeah, whatever.  Try workin’ a fiction book signing, babe, ya wanna see a rough room!  Those who love novels, short stories, and poetry love passionately and hate with equal passion.  Readers are very clear about what they want and what they want are two seemingly conflicting things.  On the one hand, they want the author to entertain them with a made-up story.   On the other hand, they demand authenticity.  A character’s motivation  and actions must ring true or readers will not come back for more.  Book lovers want to experience life vicariously through fiction.  For a short time, we readers want to be gandy dancers, spies, rock stars, or medieval knights.  It is not enough for the author to write about what he or she imagines life was like in the Middle Ages.  If fans find out to the contrary, they will consider this cheating and they will not want to read on. 

 A little work at the beginning will save the writer from egg on the face later.  Imagine the novice author at a book talk.  There stands the unwary writer waiting to soak up the love.  A hand goes up in the back row and a voice shouts out, "Excuse me, but the event you describe on page 47 did not happen in May of 1872.  It happened in June of 1873…at 2:47 in the afternoon."  No matter how much a fiction writer knows about a topic, there is nearly always a fan out there who knows more so it is best to get as many facts straight as possible.  The less fact-checking an editor needs to do, the more he or she will look kindly on the book’s author.

Best-selling authors can "do research" by flying off to Tahiti or Timbuktu to "soak up the atmosphere".  The rest of us must depend on more pedestrian but no less useful resources.  I hope this guide helps.   I have included resources for genre fiction as well as open sources available to all.  Open sources are marked with an asterisk *.  Proprietary sites require a campus log-in.  This is a work-in-progress.

Research For Fiction Authors: A Guide to Genre Resources  http://guides.auraria.edu/fiction

See and download the full gallery on posterous

First there was the Lipstick Librarian and Rex Libris, the ass-kicking, sesquipedalian librarian. Now library science brings you Dojo of the Ninja Librarian…
 
http://libraryninja.livejournal.com
 
http://www.lipsticklibrarian.com
 
http://www.jtillustration.com/rex

There is no definitive history of war: there are only many small, personal wars. Soldiers’ tales give history a face and an authentic voice. Veterans’ stories give us a window onto a moment in time and place uncensored by academics, politicians, or commercial media. For the veteran-author, therapeutic writing can give form and meaning to that which was chaotic. Creative writing or poetry can help make sense of that which has remained senseless for years or decades.

There is a new Veteran’s Writing Project forming in Denver, Colorado. If you or a veteran you know would like to participate in the project or would like more information, email Tobey.Stein@ucdenver.edu. Below are some resources for veterans and their history.

History will be kind to me because I intend to write it–Winston Churchill

Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress contains stories, photos, and artifacts of soldiers from several wars.  Best of all, veterans can record their stories here.

The Legacy Project Founded in 1998, the Legacy Project is a national, all-volunteer initiative that encourages Americans to seek out and preserve the personal correspondence of our nation’s veterans, active-duty troops, and their loved ones. No one can tell the stories of these men and women better than they can, and their sacrifices, humanity, and experiences are best recorded in their own words—the letters and e-mails they have written in times of war.

Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace is the veteran’s writing project started by author Maxine Hong Kingston.

“There’s a reason soldiers make good writers.  Under all the stress, they’ve got to remain composed, have discipline, pay attention to detail, make situational observations as if a life depended on it.”  –Andrew Carroll, Legacy Project

http://guides.auraria.edu/vets