My Prompt:
The following passage concludes an essay by Edward Abbey about Aravaipa Canyon in New Mexico. Read the 
passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you characterize Abbey’s attitudes toward nature and analyze how 
Abbey conveys these views. 

Also follow these rubrics: 
Responds to the prompt with a defensible thesis that analyzes the writer’s rhetorical choices.
Responds to the prompt rather than restate or rephrase the prompt, and the thesis clearly takes a position rather than just stating that there are pros/cons.
Provides specific evidence to support all claims in a line of reasoning.
Consistently explains how the evidence supports a line of reasoning. 
Explains how multiple rhetorical choices in the passage contribute to the writer’s argument, purpose, or message.
Uniformly offer evidence to support claims. • Focus on the importance of specific words and details from the passage to build an argument. • Organize and support an argument as a line of reasoning composed of multiple supporting claims, each with adequate evidence that is clearly explained. • Explain how the writer’s use of rhetorical choices contributes to the student’s interpretation of the passage. 
the response may observe multiple instances of the same rhetorical choice if each instance further contributes to the argument, purpose, or message of the passage.
The thesis may be more than one sentence, provided the sentences are in close proximity. • The thesis may be anywhere within the response. • For a thesis to be defensible, the passage must include at least minimal evidence that could be used to support that thesis; however, the student need not cite that evidence to earn the thesis point. • The thesis may establish a line of reasoning that structures the essay, but it needn’t do so to earn the thesis point. • A thesis that meets the criteria can be awarded the point whether or not the rest of the response successfully supports that line of reasoning
Response demonstrates sophistication of thought and/or a complex understanding of the rhetorical situation.
Explaining the significance or relevance of the writer’s rhetorical choices (given the rhetorical situation). 2. Explaining a purpose or function of the passage’s complexities or tensions. 3. Employing a style that is consistently vivid and persuasive.
 
Once, years before, I had glimpsed a mountain lion in this 
canyon, following me through the twilight. It was the only 
mountain lion I had ever seen, so far, in the wild. I stopped, 
the big cat stopped, we peered at each other through the gloom. 
5 Mutual curiosity: I felt more wonder than fear. After a minute, or 
perhaps it was five minutes, I made a move to turn. The lion leaped 
up into the rocks and melted away. 
We see no mountain lions this evening. Nor any of the local 
deer, either Sonoran whitetail or the desert mule deer, although the 
10 little heart-shaped tracks of the former are apparent in the sand. 
Javelina, or peccary, too, reside in this area; piglike animals with 
tusks, oversized heads, and tapering bodies, they roam the slopes 
and gulches in family bands, living on roots, tubers, and innards 
of barrel cactus, on grubs, insects, and carrion. Omnivorous, like 
15 us, and equally playful, if not so dangerous. Any desert canyon 
with permanent water, like Aravaipa, will be as full of life as it 
is beautiful. 
We stumble homeward over the stones and through the 
anklebone-chilling water. The winter day seems alarmingly 
20 short; it is. 
We reach the mouth of the canyon and the old trail uphill 
to the roadhead in time to see the first stars come out. Barely 
in time. Nightfall is quick in this arid climate and the air feels 
already cold. But we have earned enough memories, stored 
25 enough mental-emotional images in our heads, from one brief 
day in Aravaipa Canyon, to enrich the urban days to come. As 
Thoreau found a universe in the woods around Concord, any 
person whose senses are alive can make a world of any natural 
place, however limited it might seem, on this subtle planet of 
30 ours. 
“The world is big but it is comprehensible,” says 
R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not 
nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved 
and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, 
35 beauty, mystery, comprehensible only in part. The very existence 
of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown—not a problem 
but a mystery. 
We will never get to the end of it, never plumb the bottom of 
it, never know the whole of even so small and trivial and useless 
40 and precious a place as Aravaipa. Therein lies our redemption.