Essay Contest

As part of our 25^th anniversary celebration, we are sponsoring two essay contests—one for 7^th and 8^th graders and one for high school seniors.

The judges for the essay contests will be drawn from notable authors and naturalists residing in the county. The prizes for the 12^th graders competition are $500 for first place, $250 for second place, and $100 for third place. For the 7^th and 8^th grade competition, three winners will each be awarded a handheld GPS device. The winning essays will be publicized.

Our goal is to provide students with the intellectual and observational tools they need to become more involved with the natural environment of Columbia County.

CLC is offering in-school presentations and the opportunity for guided visits to one of CLC’s ten Public Conservation Areas. Additionally, students may elect to visit one of the Public Conservation Areas on their own, take a self-guided nature quest, or participate in one of CLC’s upcoming events.

Essay Rules

1. Length:
   12^th Graders: Essay should be between 750 and 3,000 words in length.
   7^th and 8^th Graders: Essay should be between 250 and 1,500 words in length.
2. Typed
3. Submitted to CLC by December 2.
4. Entrants must be residents of Columbia County (or attend a Columbia County school)
5. Entrants must be in 7^th, 8^th, or 12^th grade.
6. Only one essay per entrant

Download an entry form

The winners, announced January 20, will receive prizes.

Essay Guide for 12^th Grade Students

Americans have been writing about nature for hundreds of years. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in particular, wrote some of the greatest works of American literature using nature as their theme. People who aren’t familiar with their work sometimes assume that writing about nature means finding ever more eloquent ways to describe the brittleness of a fallen leaf or the violence of a whitewater stream. That sort of writing didn’t interest Emerson or Thoreau. Their focus wasn’t so much on the beauty of the physical landscape as it was on humanity and how people should interact with the land.

When Emerson wrote his landmark essay Nature in 1836, the Industrial Revolution was still in its infancy. Even so, Emerson was concerned that his fellow Americans were losing their connection to the natural environment, which he believed was essential to their salvation.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. …Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. [from Nature]

In Nature, Emerson strongly advocated that each person have a direct experience with nature, during which the self would vanish, allowing the soul to experience a transcendent reality. For this reason, Emerson and his followers were called transcendentalists.

According to Emerson, who consciously deviated from established paths to seek his own truth, “Each age must write its own books.” By this, he meant that each new generation must discover its own original relationship with the world. The greatest danger, he went on, was to become a bookworm, spending all one’s time with the thoughts of previous generations instead of exploring nature for oneself and thereby experiencing humanity anew.

For this competition, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Columbia Land Conservancy (CLC), you are invited to compose an essay in the Emersonian tradition describing your own original relationship with the natural world.

Your essay should be between 750 and 3,000 words in length. It must be typed and submitted to the CLC by December 2. Entrants must be residents of Columbia County (or attend a Columbia County school) and members of the Class of 2012. Only one essay per entrant, please. Three prizes will be awarded: $500 for first place, $250 for second, and $100 for third. The winners will be announced on January 20.

Download an entry form

Essay Guide for 7^th and 8^th Grade Students

Americans have been writing about nature for hundreds of years. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in particular, wrote some of the greatest works of American literature using nature as their theme. People who aren’t familiar with their work sometimes assume that writing about nature means finding ever more eloquent ways to describe the brittleness of a fallen leaf or the violence of a whitewater stream. That sort of writing didn’t interest Emerson or Thoreau. Their focus wasn’t so much on the beauty of the physical landscape as it was on humanity and how people should interact with the land.

Because Emerson belonged to a family of ministers, it was expected that he would become one, too, and he didn’t disappoint. In 1829, he became pastor at Boston’s Second Church. Yet just three years later, he resigned. He wanted to explore a different spiritual path, and he believed that breaking with the past would free his mind for the journey. It did. In 1836, Emerson wrote the landmark essay Nature. At the time, the Industrial Revolution was still in its infancy, but Emerson was already concerned about Americans losing their connection to the natural environment.

In 1845, Emerson offered his friend and protégé Henry David Thoreau the use of a small plot of land on Walden Pond. Thoreau built a small cabin there in which he lived for the next two years, largely by himself. Later, he wrote of the experience in his classic book Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Thoreau’s purpose was to apply the principles he had learned from Emerson to his daily life—especially Emerson’s idea that God is thoroughly embedded in nature. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” Thoreau wrote, “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

In this excerpt from Walden, Thoreau explains why it is important for people to have a connection to the land around them:

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

For this competition, which celebrates the 25^th anniversary of the Columbia Land Conservancy (CLC), you are invited to compose an essay in the Emersonian tradition describing, as Thoreau did, your own relationship with nature.

Your essay should be between 250 and 1,500 words in length. It must be typed and submitted to the CLC by December 2. Entrants must be residents of Columbia County (or attend a Columbia County school) and currently in the seventh or eighth grade. Only one essay per entrant, please. Three winners will each receive a prize of a GPS device. The winners will be announced January 20.

Download an entry form

Getting Started

This essay contest is meant to challenge you as a writer and as a thinker. As described in the contest announcement, we don’t want you merely to describe nature as you see it but to think deeply about the role of the natural world in your life, as Emerson and Thoreau did. This document is intended to help you get started.

A good way to begin is to read what others have done. This is probably the best way to find a specific topic that interests you. If you read something that you like, figure out what you liked about it and try to emulate it. If you read something you don’t like, figure out what it was you didn’t like and go in another direction. In addition to Emerson and Thoreau, you might want to read the work of writers such as Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire), Rachel Carson (A Silent Spring), Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac), and John Muir (The Story of My Boyhood and Youth). You can ask your local school or public librarian for help finding these and other books.

Once you’ve begun to think about the different approaches nature writers can take, you might want to spend some time outdoors yourself. The Columbia Land Conservancy maintains ten Public Conservation Areas, where you can spend some time off the beaten path. But you don’t have to go far. You can start in your own backyard or neighborhood park. Maybe bring some of Emerson or Thoreau’s writing with you and try to imagine how their world differs from yours. Does their writing still speak to you even though more than a century has passed? If so, you might want to write about the ways in which their ideas are similar to your own. If not, you can write about how your perceptions differ.

Essayists often write about the places where they grew up and how the landscapes of those places influenced what they think and how they live. Do you think this will be true for you as well? You might want to consider whether there are aspects of the land around you that are having an impact of which you might not be aware. Do you think that if you lived in another sort of environment, such as a large city, you might think differently about the environment?

Another good way to develop your own ideas is to talk with other people about what they think. As with reading, this can be helpful whether you agree or disagree with their points of view. Either way, talking about the subject can help clarify your own ideas and bring new thoughts to mind. Try asking someone who works outside or makes a living from the environment how they feel about the natural world and what they think a proper relationship between humans and nature would be. Their answers may surprise you and start you thinking in a new, creative way.

Once you are ready to begin writing, keep these criteria in mind. The best essays will demonstrate correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. They will convey both a strong central idea and an unmistakable sense of place. Most of all, they will be personal, explaining to the reader something meaningful about the writer’s view of the natural world.

Additional Resources

American Transcendentalists Web
The Thoreau Reader
Classic Nature Books