Dear Snow...

 

    I really enjoyed the exercise we did the other day, I think it gave me a lot of good inspiration for my winter short. I decided to go with a letter that I'm writing to snow about how I feel growing up from outside New England where there was not a lot of snow around. I posted what I have of my rough draft so far along with my winter photo that I took from my apartment, and the descriptive words I wrote during our outdoor activity. 

    In regard to the tree readings, I especially enjoyed the tree video from Patagonia as well as the reading from "Hermann Hesse on What Trees Teach Us About Belonging and Life." The Patagonia was so well-done not only because of the beautiful personalization of trees, but also because of the editing and the use of multimedia to describe various types of trees from across the world. The clips of beautiful landscapes of the snowy mountains as well as the ones of the snow surfer flying through the trees was very pleasing to the eye. I really enjoyed the reading by Hermann Hesse, and how he described trees as individuals rather than objects. For example, he says "They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche." He describes trees as very bold individualistic elements that are essential to the Earth. Overall, I think in addition to our exercise outside, these readings and the video on trees will help me personify snow, which will then lead to a descriptive passage.