By Elizabeth Enslin on February 2, 2010
A contemporary song reminds me of all that inspired me to become an anthropologist eons ago….
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Posted in Cultural Diversity, Recent | Tagged cultural anthropology, inspiration, maturity, music, stories
By Elizabeth Enslin on August 18, 2009
I finally finished the website for Ajamvari Farm, a family run permaculture project in Nepal that hosts volunteers. I helped develop the farm fifteen-some years ago while living in Nepal and discovered a passion for growing food that still runs strong today.
The website provides information on opportunities for homestays and volunteering at the farm as
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Posted in Cultural Diversity, Sustainable Food, Sustainable Gardening, Travel, wordpress, World Travel | Tagged blogging, cultural anthropology, inspiration, Sustainable Gardening, web design
By Elizabeth Enslin on June 17, 2009
The garden is in now, so it’s time to get back to working on my ethnographic memoir on living as a family member and anthropologist in Nepal. I’m currently revising the chapter where I describe an encounter with an enormous hibernating toad. My six-year old son and his Nepali uncle and cousin almost hoed it in half as they weeded around a lemon tree. My son called me from my academic writing to see it. I picked the sluggish toad out of its burrow and prodded it to hop off to a safer spot. Then I decided to pitch in to help prepare a vegetable garden and discovered a passion for growing food (and a lack of passion for academia) that continues to this day.
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Posted in Species of the Week | Tagged amphibians, cultural anthropology, nature writing, Nepal
By Elizabeth Enslin on May 5, 2009
About a month ago, I wrote a post on California condors, birds that had been haunting my imagination for some time. While browsing information for that post, I learned about the plight of carrion-eaters once common in the plains of Nepal, Pakistan, and India.
I lived in the plains of Nepal for three years in the late 80s and early 90s and also traveled through India during that time. I remember seeing parakeets, egrets, mynahs, and many colorful songbirds. But even though I must have passed by them hundreds of times, I don’t remember seeing Gyps bengalensis, the White-Rumped Vulture (also referred to as the Oriential White-Backed Vulture). Nor do I remember associated species, such as G.indicus (Long-billed vulture) or G.tenuirostris (Tender-billed Vulture). And they were all probably abundant….
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Posted in Biodiversity, Cultural Diversity, Species of the Week | Tagged cultural anthropology, nature, wild
By Elizabeth Enslin on April 15, 2009
I didn’t have a lot of time today to respond to the “instead of …” prompt at Read Write Poem or the “Poem Title” prompt at Poetic Asides. I’m tearing down and rebuliding the farm chapter in my ethnographic memoir on Nepal and also, coincidentally, designing a website for the farm I worked on.
Trying to
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Posted in NaPoWriMo | Tagged cultural anthropology, inspiration, Nepal, Sustainable Gardening
By Elizabeth Enslin on April 9, 2009
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Posted in NaPoWriMo | Tagged childhood, cultural anthropology, Poetry, science, species
By Elizabeth Enslin on March 2, 2009
I’ve published (or will soon have published) six pieces over the last year of full-time writing, but the lyric essay – “A Nature Lover’s Phobia” – posted online in Fringe Magazine: The Environment Issue yesterday makes me particularly happy.
I have wanted to be a nature writer since childhood. I thought becoming a zoologist would lead
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Posted in Writing | Tagged creative nonfiction, cultural anthropology, ethnography, Fringe Magazine, nature, nature writing, stories, The Gettysburg Review, wild
Fringe Magazine
High Desert Journal
In the Mist
Opium Magazine
Oregon Literary Review
The Smoking Poet
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