Abstract
I have the good fortune to live adjacent to the Blue Mountains National Park with its heath-covered plateaus and deeply incised canyons that protect pockets of temperate coachwood and sassafras rainforest. The jointing pattern in the sandstone ledges in the local Faulconbridge area means that there are many "person-sized" caves and overhangs in the bushland with dark lichen-covered exteriors and intricate honey-coloured wind-carved interiors. The structure of broad exposures of rock and intimate spaces between them has encouraged me to pause during my explorations, to sit quietly and discover the different qualities of each little cave that I encounter. During the ten years my partner Vicki and I have lived here, I have written more personally about my experiences of place, especially the contrast between our garden and the bushland (1) and have noticed the effect on my teaching practices. Place, writing and education have become increasingly intertwined for me. I am particularly interested in how the practice of nature writing relates to place-based education because I have long taught undergraduate and postgraduate subjects concerned with the philosophy and practice of place-based education at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). One of my aims with these subjects, each of which has the phrase "sense of place" in its title, has been to facilitate students paying closer attention to their place relationships and enabling them to do so with others. Our whole program in Social Ecology at UWS is run on experiential learning principles, among others, so weekly immersion in a place of their choosing is fundamental to the structure of the subjects, as is a set of readings that includes nature writing.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Southerly |
Publication status | Published - 2004 |
Keywords
- place
- writing
- education
- nature
- social ecology