I hear the wind, trees creaking, black capped chickadees, and footsteps cracking branches in the distance. On my walk over to my spot, I see nuthatches and hear a hairy woodpecker. It was a beautiful time of day where the sun was hitting the ground, streaming through the trees and glistening. When I arrived at my phenology spot, the first thing I noticed was the sun shimmering on the frozen over creek.
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There’s not a lot of changes to my sight in the sense of wildlife, I can’t find many tracks, and the ones I can find are of dogs only. Human tracks seem to cover most of my area, even where the ground seems so off trail no one would bother adventuring there. I think it’s interesting in that sense, the way humans think and interact with the environment. The winter snow reveals all of our thoughts and patterns of walking, it shows us where others have explored out of curiosity. I do think that humans go off trail more in the winter because of the phenological changes occurring. I’m sitting in the woods at my phenology spot as I write this and I can’t help but notice visitors of the woods walking by, discovering the creek bed had been frozen, and without a second thought, stepping onto it. The frozen water gives us more opportunities to explore what’s beyond the river, it lets us experiment with the thickness of the ice. There were two people in particular walking by that reminded me of human curiosity. They reached the creek and when they realized it had frozen over, they immediately hopped onto it and started stomping around in the distance, sliding across the ice, and exploring more off trail. As I continue to write this, yet another person is exploring off trail on the same path the other two took. When the snow coats the ground it forms more rogue trails that other people tend to follow. I think it’s interesting to think about in this sense, the way humans will go off the main path if they see footprints in the snow. It’s almost a testament to how many of us are followers versus leaders. The photos below depict the tracks I found with the tracks guide for size reference.
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I looked around my spot for more animal tracks and other signs of wildlife activity, however I could only find dog tracks. Due to Centennial being a public forest, there are a lot of people walking through the trails and along my phenology spot. My location is right off the main trail, so many people walked by while I was visiting my phenology spot. I saw two dogs go off trail wandering around the snow, this leads me to confirm the reality of the tracks in my spot. The biggest phenological change that occurred was the creek freezing over. I looked around further out from the center of my phenology spot searching for tracks and came across a part of the creek that was frozen in an amber color. I am very curious as to what this may be, as there are many possible reasonings for this pigment in the water. The photo below depicts this amber ice.
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