CW-Setting

See, I told you I had a lot of catch-up to do about my class! That's like, five posts in one day. Phew.
Out last assignment involved describing a setting.
We read several examples about that included very vivid settings. It's probably something I should spend more time on.
So, you obviously want lots of details. But a lot of them need to say something more other than just set the scene.
One example from one of our readings was that a little girl pinched her sister's dirty ankle. That's pretty significant, cause it shows that the girls are dirty and not well cared for.
Little details that reveal a lot without outright saying it.
It's first person. It's not an event. Just a place where an event happens.
I guess I could post my example. It's not professional. Heheh.
Sure. Why not.
We had a limit of 2 pages. And I'd used up almost all of it before I even went inside...
It's easy to get carried away if you're not careful.
^-^'


We follow the coiling road as it treks up the mountain and slides over the peak. Douglas fir and madrone drape their branches over the road, and dust-caked ferns and foxgloves reach out to stroke the car’s side-windows. We turn a corner past monstrous huckleberry bushes draped with jewel-like blue berries and tiny spiders.
The road levels out and I’m next to a handcrafted wooden house nestled in the woods. Grandma and Grandpa emerge from the side door, descending the worn wooden steps to greet us with hugs. Often there’s other cars parked here. Aunts, uncles and cousins, ready to hike out to the lightning-stuck Owl Tree standing alone in the center of the meadow, one branch clinging to life. Ready to walk past grandma’s art studio, past the garage, to where the faded hammock rests between two trees and where the tire swing sways beneath a Douglas fir.
I ascend the short flight of steps to their deck, worn smooth by years of feet. The tiny cracks have been filled with pine needles that have turned to earth. The shined heads of the nails gleam in the sunlight. I step over the potted plants and aunt Jill’s mosaic heron to lean over the rough balcony railing. Directly beneath me is their small vegetable garden. Sweet peas grow in a tangled rush up the latticework. Stubby onion leaves poke out of the dirt, watched over by a single gopher plant. A few bashful strawberries hide behind their protective netting. Green tomatoes push at the wire of the garden fence, trying to escape. Next to one of the garden gate is a bush with flowers that I used to think looked like mouse heads. If you pull a flower off of its green petiole, you can squeeze its base to produce a single drop of nectar. And then the garden gates. Oddly enough, there are two latches on each of the doors. I smile. When I was little, Grandpa would bring me down to the garden, but I couldn’t reach the latch to open the door. So, Grandpa added a second latch just for me. My own latch, to help open the wire door.
I turn my gaze upward. To either side, other mountains come down, nestling the house in a forested cradle. But directly below the house, the land slopes downward, covered in patches of manzanita and Douglas fir. If I look far enough, I can see the ocean, seemingly hanging from the base of the blue sky.
When you finally step into the house, it lets out a creak of greeting, and the familiar smell meets you. A smell of childhoods spent in the house in the woods.
The sliding door is set into a series of picture windows that line the back wall. The dining table sits against the window wall, and across the room are two couches set in an L shape in front of the seldom-used TV. Continuing clockwise, you pass the bedroom door, the neglected computer, the Native American carvings on the walls, the front door, and the potted fern. Finally you reach the little reading nook with the couch and the basket of stuffed animals and children’s books. Past the reading corner is the hallway covered in Grandma’s paintings and pictures of family – a time machine of me, my cousins, my mom, and her four siblings. One photo especially stands out, of Mom, Jim, Scot, Dave , and Jill as children, with each of them looking exactly as they do today, especially the expression on Mom’s face.
Finally you loop around through the kitchen, where there’s a set of cobalt blue jars and vases catching the sunlight in yet another window. Mr. Guy, the solid black cat that mysteriously appeared on their doorstep at the dead of night, brushes against my heels, purring.