A UVM blog Wonder Blog

I chose to take an image of my area from Google Earth to show the landscape from a birds eye view. Each number indicates the location of a corresponding picture I took. The area at the bottom marked “Home” is where I grew up and where I’m living this summer. I wanted to use images to paint a picture and give the reader a virtual tour of the area from my perspective. Many of the images will mean nothing to people who had never been there before so I wanted to make it more personal by explaining why I chose to take the picture and how the image connects to me. I spent a lot of time in the woods and in the lake as a kid and haven’t been out there as much in recent years so this area is very nostalgic to me. Spending time here for my journal entries was like a walk down memory lane due to all the time I spend here when I was younger. I call this area “the point” since it was the point at the end of my cove. I spent a lot of time swimming here, playing with my brother and neighbors, and even built a fort. I explain these experiences in further detail below, but I also wanted to capture the area as I see it today as well so I took pictures of nature that I thought were effective in displaying the small details that I didn’t catch when I was a kid. I spent much more time than i’ve ever had really dissecting the landscape and the ecosystem. Even though it’s a relatively small area, it’s a very important spot to me and I want to display that through this project by showing you the area and explaining the nuances.

1. This is a tree downed by a beaver. As shown by the location, it is a bit further out from the main area I spent time in but it really caught my eye because it was the only downed tree I could find that the beaver didn’t take with it. This tree was upright when I was a kid, so I suspect the beaver has moved into the area within the past 5 years or so. There is also a lot of plant growth at the base of the tree which I think reflects the decay and growth cycle of the forest since these plants were not here when the tree was upright and living.

2. This is an ant looking into a hole in a leaf. There is a large patch of dead leaves covered with ants in this area which used to be where my fort was when I was younger. As shown by the pile of decay, time hasn’t been very kind to my fort and it is now filled with old decaying leaves. Even though the fort has been abandoned by my brother, neighbors, and I, the fort has been taken over by new, and much smaller residents.

3. This is an old dinghy that is near the end of the point perched by the water. This dinghy has been in the same spot for as long as I can remember. When I was young I took it out with some friends because we figured nobody was using it. A few days later, my neighbors who owned it were mad at my parents for letting us take their boat out, so we had to let it sit here unused from then on. Since then, we’ve taken out kayaks that belong to us instead, so we don’t aggravate any more of our neighbors.

4. This is a tree that was half gnawed out by a beaver. Beavers have to gnaw on trees most days in order to keep their teeth regulated and healthy, so I figured that’s why it chose to not take it down. Right behind the tree is the spot where I usually go swimming so I’m glad the beaver chose to keep it up instead of collapsing it right into my swimming area.

5. This is a plot of moss with rocks near the base of a tree. There are many small plots like this in the area but I thought this one was a cool one to capture because I noticed small insects flying around near it. There is actually one in the moss near the center of the image. I never paid much mind to things like this when I was a kid, but now I can see the beauty in the small things in the area and how every little piece of the location is a part of the ecosystem.

6. This is a small stone sculpture of a frog next to a bench. This is on the trail between my house and my main area that I recorded my journal entries. This has been here for as long as I can remember, as shown by the dirt that is on the sculpture due to time. In the background, you can see a house that belongs to my neighbors, Nancy and Bill. I used to swim at their dock a lot as a kid with my other neighbors and go off of their rope swing so this area has always had a special place in my heart.

7. This was taken because it was a unique species growing in the middle of a large patch of a completely different species of plant. There are many of these patches of plant growth in the area, but they all seem to be pretty homogenous, with not many other plants being able to survive in the same patch as them. This larger plant is an exception to this trend so I thought it was an interesting image to capture. I didn’t pay much attention to the different species when I came here as a kid, so going back for these journal entries opened my eyes to the the small details such as the niches these species survive in.

8. There is a lot of decay in the area illustrating the life cycle of the plants. Most of the images I captured show growth and prosperity, but I intend to show the full image of the area, which consists of many downed trees, pine needles, and sticks like the one pictured.

9. This is another moss bed similar to image 5. It was also taken near the base of a tree and had some interesting looking rocks poking out of the soil. This was taken after a thunderstorm so it has a very different vibe than image 5 had. It’s much more wet, dark, and there aren’t insects flying around near it either illustrating how different the forest can be depending on the day.

10. This is an image of a tree taken near my old fort. A lot of the leaves have imperfections such as holes and cuts out of them. It was probably done by animals or fungi infesting the trees. Many of the leaves look like this in the area so I thought it would be a good idea to capture this image to paint a picture of what the area looks like.

11. This was one of the items I chose to sketch during class. It was found right at the waters edge off to the side of my swimming area. When I was younger my parents, brother, and I moved all the large rocks out of the way by hand and used a rake to get rid of all the leaves and sticks so we had a nice area to swim. I could have even moved this exact rock off to the side all those years ago.

12. This is the area where my childhood fort used to be. You can still see the outline from the large logs and bundles of sticks. There are many logs and sticks that are now gone, which probably rolled down the hill during a storm. The leaves in the middle near the bundles of sticks is where image 2 was captured. The sticks used to be stacked high so we had some sort of wall around us. We haven’t done any maintenance on the fort in years, so it eventually collapsed and the fort has been lost to time. We used to have huge battles with sticks and nerf guns with all of the neighborhood kids and this was one of the two home bases. We would play for hours until it would usually end with someone accidentally hitting another persons hand too hard in a stick battle and getting hurt. Even though my parents would usually be livid if someone got hurt, it was still one of my fondest memories growing up. It’s sad to see it gone now since we spent hours upon hours in that fort when we were kids.