Exploring a Natural Area

What is a place?

Which place is worth preserving?

Who decides this?

Speak the voices unheard.

The ones with dark skin who build blue skies.

A field stretches beyond the horizon.

Who decides which flower is beautiful?

Can we decide when we don’t know what’s beneath their eyes?

The world is endless so why should place hold one lens?

Listen to all voices.

Keep your mind spacious and welcoming.

The mind is endless and plentiful.

I wrote this in NR6. It is an important concept that expresses the purpose of environmental science and why we should study it. It is the emotional connection a person has with place. Everyone has different perspectives on what their sense of place is. Sense of place helps to bring a community together. It’s beautiful how humans have this ability to cultivate a sense of place. One way to reflect this is writing a phenology blog. I have enjoyed learning about my place and feeling connected to this spot. I’m going to remember this spot in Centennial forever.

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

~This quote resonated with me. It feels personal. It expresses the spiritual desire to be out in nature. Humans should be adventurous, keeping in mind the deep, emotional connection to what is experienced.

I tried to take pictures of buds from trees to identify them but a lot of the branches are out of reach. I do have one picture of a Sugar maple bud. I posted it on my pictures page.

This was my last visit. I noticed the snow had melted. The stream was no longer ice covered around the edges. I found a new mushroom, a black Wood ear! I heard a lot of crows and kinglets. There were a lot of NR1 students who were doing their last visit. I enjoyed talking with someone; we talked about the work we’ve done for our blog. I planned on practicing yoga but I didn’t get around to it. I heard loud air craft. It was louder than I had ever heard them before. I touched the wet soil in the stream. I looked inside and there were leaves covered by sand and mud. I found a shell. It was small and clear colored. I admired the colored rocks that surround the brook. I noticed there were more foam bubbles in the stream. I started to think about land use history. I observed that the stand of white pines was in rows. On the way back, I went to Michaels for art supplies. I’m going to paint the soil horizons.

I finished my Fall art piece. I focused on the expression of the season and its burst of colors. I wanted to provoke the feeling and beauty of what fall represents. It was so fascinating to see how this one compared to the winter one in both colors and expression.

Centennial is covered with snow. It’s a winter wonderland! It looks so different. I got lost and couldn’t recognize my direction on my way to my spot, with which I’m so familiar. It was weird for me that I wasn’t able to get there without getting lost. I ended up getting there by taking a different route and crossing the brook. I noticed on my way that there were new mushrooms growing on a log that used to only have Orange Jelly. There were Turkey Tails, Crowded parchment, and Luminescent Panellus. I got to identify those two new mushrooms. The Orange Jelly looked like an inflated balloon! I realized that the mushrooms I found before weren’t White Cheese Polypore but were Crimped Grill. I noticed that most of the stream wasn’t frozen and the water was running quickly. The buckthorn tangles had fallen and lost all of their leaves. The vegetation on the other side of the stream wasn’t nearly as dense as it used to be. The only trees that still had some of their leaves in my area were the oaks. Oak leaves were on top of the ice while the leaves of other trees were frozen below the ice. There weren’t as many birds flying around. I could hear kinglets and chickadees. I saw a tufted titmouse as I left the woods. I noticed a lot of Black-capped chickadees were hopping from branch to branch near the ground, foraging for the winter. I admired observing every small detail in nature in the winter and seeing the snow. A lot of people don’t love going out in nature in the winter but that’s my favorite time. It feels tranquil and I often notice the little things that make me think deep thoughts. I loved seeing the ice over the leaves. I thought up some poems that I’ll share!