Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Making Tracks: Birgit Schneider

By Birgit Schneider I have been interested in representations with a focus on visuality for a very long time. In fact, it wasn’t my early childhood experiences with the outdoors that led to my interest in environmental issues in the first place, but rather my mediated experiences with nature. Like most others, I frequently encounter…
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Making Tracks: Lynda Walsh

By Lynda Walsh I’m not 100 percent positive, but I believe I may be the first rhetorician who has been a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center. This impression was corroborated by the confused squints that frequently greeted me when I introduced myself in the corridors or at a Works-in-Progress meeting: “Rhetoric?†my new colleagues…
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Making Tracks: Charlie Trautmann

By Charlie Trautmann Have you ever received a paperback for Christmas from your mother-in-law that landed you a fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich? I have. My journey to the Carson Center was more like an odyssey—long and circuitous.
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Making Tracks: Chris Cokinos

By Chris Cokinos Intention is a funny thing, especially when it comes to creative work. Intention can become something forced; it can become an attachment to outcome at the expense of actually giving into the work itself. There’s a phrase from Taoist philosophy—wu wei. Wu wei means working without effort. Flow.
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Making Tracks: Teresa Spezio

By Teresia Spezio As a child, I had first-hand experience with air and water pollution. I grew up in the city of Pittsburgh, which was once the steel making capital of the United States. I remember trips on the Parkway East with my family driving past the Jones & Laughlin primary steel mill where men…
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Making Tracks: Gregg Mitman
In the “Making Tracks†series, RCC fellows and alumni present their experiences in environmental humanities, retracing the paths that led them to the Rachel Carson Center. For more information, please click here. By Gregg Mitman My journey to the Rachel Carson Center began in 1967 in the backseat of a blue Dodge sedan, packed with my…
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Making Tracks: Lisa FitzGerald
In the “Making Tracks†series, RCC fellows and alumni present their experiences in environmental humanities, retracing the paths that led them to the Rachel Carson Center. For more information, please click here. By Lisa FitzGerald Environments needle their way into our minds, becoming the settings for our stories but also telling their own tales. Landscapes push…
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Making Tracks: Mu Cao
In the “Making Tracks†series, RCC fellows and alumni present their experiences in environmental humanities, retracing the paths that led them to the Rachel Carson Center. For more information, please click here. By Mu Cao. When I was little, I spent a lot of time sitting in our small yard listening to funny local stories…
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Making Tracks: Tom Griffiths
In the “Making Tracks†series, RCC fellows and alumni present their experiences in environmental humanities, retracing the paths that led them to the Rachel Carson Center. For more information, please click here. “Meditations of a Sputnik†by Tom Griffiths I am a “Sputnik,†born in the year the Soviet satellite launched the Cold War into…
