Writing About Place:

Science and the Cannon River Region

Heather Wayne, St. Olaf College

Senior Environmental Studies Research

When people ask me what I’m going to do with the environmental studies major, I say I’d like to get into science writing.  My response usually elicits a look somewhere between confusion and disgust.  That is, unless I’m answering a scientist.  Scientists usually beam when they find a non-scientist who wants to share their work with others in an interesting and understandable fashion.

When I started thinking about a topic for this assignment, I was sure I wanted to include science writing somehow.  I considered analyzing other science writers’ pieces or compiling a history of science writing about the Cannon River Region.  Those probably would have been safer, gentler, and tamer projects.  Instead, I chose to toss myself into the center of my research project and to write my own articles about scientific and environmental issues in the Cannon River Region.

I invite you to wander around this website, and most of all, I invite you to wonder.  Because wonder is what science and science writing are really all about.