I had an ordeal today trying to explore and track in centennial woods, and I am going to tell you the story because it pains me, and my roommates do not want to hear it. Firstly! It was incredibly slippery today as the snowpack was just icy enough on the surface and just shallow enough that I couldn’t break through to less slick snow. I pretty much slid into centennial just having to trust that I could catch myself on trees on the way down. When exploring, I heard a beautiful and distinct black capped chickadee, and I tried to record the sound, but inaturalist was being incredibly stubborn and refused to save it so I wasn’t able to actually make that observation, because sometimes it refuses to work at all ever. I crawled through a bush to find a track I saw only for it to be incredibly indistinct. At some point I lost my phone and my tracking book in the woods, having to go back and find it, awkwardly passing a wildlife camera several times on the way. In going back to find my phone I slipped and fell, perilously careening down a hill towards the stream and was only able to stop myself at the last minute due to the grace of falling on a log which while not a pleasant experience was better than being cold and wet. By the time I found my phone sunset was fast approaching and I was only able to get one or two pictures… and then my phone died. So, I had to get out of the woods in the increasing darkness having gone fully off trail. Plus, when I saw a mouse right in front of me I couldn’t take a picture because I had nothing to take a picture with. Also, a lot of the tracks that I tried to find ended up being dogs, which was somewhat of an expected consequence of being in a well-loved natural area but frustrating none the less, because they really didn’t always look like dog tracks at first.
Any who it was a pleasant experience overall because I really do like being outside especially in the warm winter days and I did have snow pants on so I was not too cold, but it was certainly a trial. I did have fun though and it was really cool to see so many of my classmates exploring as well.
