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Writing with Your Senses - Descriptive Writing

     Like a narrative, description is a familiar method of expression, already a working part of you. In any frivolous conversation with friends, you probably do your share of describing. You relate in wards someone you've met by describing their clothing, the mannerisms, the facial expressions, and the way they were walking. You may have described somewhere you've been, something that you have admired, or something you just can't fathom.

In a journal, diary, or letter to a friend, you describe your school, or perhaps you describe the neighborhood, or Masjid you now attend and the Muslim sisters who come there. We hardly go one day without describing some person, place, or thing. In writing, description is almost indispensable as paper.

A descriptive paragraph, essay, or article is written for two purposes:

• to convey information without any bias or emotion
• to convey something with feeling

Smuggler’s Notch

“The snow was blinding, thrashing through the air, the ice particles taping hard on my face and goggles. The sign to the ski trail was invisible in the snowstorm. Everything was white as I skied blindly through the snow. It was a white-out. A faint, muffled shout was carried to me by the wind. My mother, the only other companion on the slope, was beckoning me to follow her. The small descent of the slope was breath-taking. The forever beauty of Vermont mountains at Smuggler’s Notch were too picture-perfect, but they stood, mountain majesties against the dim-lit sky.

The trail was empty and silent beside the howling wind. The winding path turned through a mile less forest of trees, always making me wonder if we’d ever get to the bottom. Why is it taking so long/Is there anybody else here? Questions zipped through my mind like the stock taped of Wall street. My legs throbbed and threatened to slip from beneath me. I glided up beside my mom and insisted we stop and rest. She quickly agreed. We stood there, in the middle of the trail, resting, but also waiting in hope for another skier to arrive. None came. Ten minutes inched by. Suddenly we began to hear noises… voices, music, and moving about sounds. Convinced that that was the lodge, we hurried on down the slope. Coming over the last rise, we saw the base lodge at last. It was the only bright light among the dark forest, with people inside chugging down hot cocoa by the fire. That experience, though it happened some years back, is still a clear memory in my mind.”