Many of our most popular contemporary writers - Annie Dillard and Terry Tempest Williams, Kathleen Norris and Scott Russell Sanders, Barry Lopez and Jane Goodall - have told us of the places and landscapes that have shaped their lives, work, and beliefs. Their works stand in a long tradition of American nature memoir - or, in my term, environmental autobiography - that includes Thoreau, John Muir, Mary Austin, and Aldo Leopold, to name just a few. Besides making fascinating reading, such life-stories provide readers with models for overcoming the feelings of alienation and disconnection from place, past, and nature experienced by so many people in the face of the incessant social mobility and environmental change of the modern world. Along with helping us discern who we are, telling the stories of our lives-in-place can empower us to envision and to create what we - and our landscapes and communities - may become in the future.

Such reflections and stories are not the domain of professional writers alone, but of anyone who cares about the importance of place and nature in their life - which means, almost everyone! The links at left offer ideas to get you started in reflecting on the meanings of place and nature in your own life: Writing Your Life in Place gives suggestions for exploring important places and experiences from childhood to the present, and Resources lists books and articles to help you dig further into these issues. Most of all, I encourage you to start thinking and writing about your own life-in-place, with as much courage, depth, and passion as you can!