Personal Memories In Kingsolver's Horse Lick Creek

Intimately connecting herself to the environment in Horse Lick Creek, Kingsolver uses personal memories to both affix herself in nature and to elaborate upon her desire to protect it. In her work, “The Memory Palace,” Kingsolver tells of her own experience with her environment and how her childhood in the woods altered and benefitted her sense of self in the world. Initially, she recollects upon her personal experience, painting for her readers a picture of the way a child views nature, magical, intense, and adventurous. By doing this she connects her reader to herself and to nature, allowing them to empathize with the environment, seeing its joy, feeling its pain, and finding its beauty. After telling the readers of her personal experience
with nature, she recounts how the wilderness shaped her beliefs. In this, she not only further connects the reader to herself, but she strengthens the importance of nature. Nature doesn't only need preservation on account of saving various species; nature is necessary because it forms people. The environment produces and develops beliefs and teaches invaluable lessons. Finally Kingsolver envisions the world without the lush wildness that was her backyard as a child and how a lack of her childhood fantasies would have changed the person she is today. The memories that she has of her imperfect land meant so much to her and created so much of her personality today and without them she would fail to be the person she is now. By expounding upon this, she gives her readers a glimpse of what a world without these imperfect yet prerequisite places would be. By using her personal experiences and nostalgia to place herself in nature, Kingsolver gave readers an intimate connection with herself, her writing, and Horse Lick Creek. Her writing creates a desire to preserve places such as these, to preserve the wilderness, even imperfect ones. Her memories bonds readers to the wild and show the priceless values of nature.