Writing in the Wilderness:
A national monument serves as a natural classroom
Hal Crimmel sits on an overturned bucket by the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument, a straw hat shading his youthful face. Now an associate professor of English at Weber State University, he worked his way through college on rivers in the summer and mountains in winter, balancing his time in physically and emotionally demanding places.
Crimmel is surrounded by an odd assortment of 11 people, ranging in age from 19 to almost 50. Some wear shorts, t-shirts and flip flops, others the latest microfibers and hiking boots from a sporting goods store. All hold notebooks and pens as they sprawl in a semicircle around Crimmel on lawn chairs, a picnic table or a mat on the ground.
It’s a camping trip, but it’s also a WSU class: English 3350, Studies in Literary Genres. This summer’s course, called “Creative Nonfiction in Dinosaur National Monument,” consists of on-campus meetings to read and analyze the work of nature writers, followed by a trip into the wild where students can find their own inspiration.
“Take 20 minutes to write in your journal about an experience you had today,” Crimmel says. “Think about the techniques used by the authors we’re studying; the way Ann Zwinger provides vivid descriptions of the natural environment, or the way Edward Abbey and Ellen Meloy describe characters and events in their narrative. Use one of those techniques to describe something you experienced today.”
For a few moments, students in this unorthodox outdoor classroom stare blankly at their notebooks. One by one they begin writing, pens flying across pages in fits and starts.
When Crimmel calls “time,” each student seems rapt in thought.
“Would someone be willing to read what they wrote?”
After a long silence, Ryan Stanger, an English major in his early 20s who works the graveyard shift at Cerro Wire & Insulation, volunteers.
“To the uninitiated, it might appear a trifle absurd that a fisherman should take thread, scraps of feathers and bits of different colored fur and materials, and tie them on a hook with the intention of fooling a fish into believing that this is its favorite food. To me it has become second nature, as soothing as breathing in and out to calm my panting after a long jog. Most fly tiers are gracious people who freely give their patterns, and even their own flies to others. Several occasions have proven this statement to be true, being on the receiving and giving end of a fly that was taking.”
Marilee Mason, a nontraditional student and mom who is taking the class to improve her ability to write creative nonfiction, compliments Stanger on his use of metaphor.
Anita Wahlstrom, wife and mother of three teenage daughters, is impressed by Stanger’s use of language: “Not bad for a short journal entry.”
Ben Wheeler, self-proclaimed “English-major-and-tirebuster” with a day job at Jay’s American Car Care, volunteers a raucous journal entry about the noisy people in the campsite across the way. Admitting he is “under the influence of Abbey,” much of his colorful description is unprintable in these pages.
Crimmel and his students pass the morning hours in camp, discussing the previous night’s reading assignment and analyzing journal entries. They break for lunch, then head out for a hike in the warmth of a late-May afternoon. In the hour before dinner, students read desert-inspired authors Terry Tempest Williams and Craig Childs in preparation for another class session that evening.
For five days they repeat this “class schedule,” which Crimmel describes as a combination of a “sun on the face, wind in the hair, cold feet and dirty hands” approach to learning with “the pattern of life in a monastery.” On the last day, students and professor float a section of the Green River, experiencing first-hand the sights and sounds described by Zwinger and Meloy, before making the long drive back to the WSU campus.
Crimmel has been teaching English literature and writing classes in the outdoors for 12 years. In addition to teaching Edward Abbey in the desert, Crimmel’s adventures include Willa Cather in the tallgrass prairie of a Midwestern campus arboretum and “the literature of winter” on the shore of Lake Superior. His experiences became the inspiration for an edited collection of essays titled “Teaching in the Field.”
“In an outdoor classroom, students are free from the distractions of campus and their daily lives,” Crimmel explains. “As a result, they can reflect on what they are learning and attain a focus and clarity of thought not always possible in a traditional classroom environment.”
When the class discussion breaks up for the evening, a few people linger around the campfire, listening to Wheeler’s story of taking a date to the local dump because it was the make-out spot in his hometown. Between bursts of uncontrollable laughter from the class, Crimmel suggests Wheeler may be overdosing on Abbey.
Further from the group, Mason and Wahlstrom hike down to the river, using the cover of darkness to bathe after a long day in the Eastern Utah sun.
As midnight approaches, a crescent moon peeks over the rim of Split Mountain, reflecting off the water and the concrete boat ramp. A lone figure sits hunched over a book, the glow of a flashlight barely perceptible against the inky blackness of the desert sky. His internal clock still on the graveyard shift, Stanger is engrossed in “The Secret Knowledge of Water” by Craig Childs. He finishes the entire book before crawling back into his tent, and drifts to sleep with desert sandstone and rivers floating through his mind.
Kathryn Edwards, University Communications
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