Month: March 2020

Week of May 24^th– 31^st

Under the umbrella of quarantine, my communication with nature has become limited. There is no longer a reason to go outside to walk to get to classes and it is easy to find yourself distracted in the comfort of your own home. Sometimes you forget to give yourself a chance to breath fresh air, but when you do, it feels amazing.

On March 26^th I went for a walk in my backyard which mainly consists of woods. The farther you go back into the woods there is evidence of a metal fence my dad installed when I was little.

In case I ran off, my parents wanted to make sure that I didn’t go into the depth of the woods that goes for a couple of miles. When I was out there, I noticed that this expanse of forest was much denser that other forested areas I’ve seen because it has had almost no human interference. No trails for walking were cleared and there weren’t any rock walls or trash left behind. There were no clearings, no tree markings, just thick and full woods so dense that almost the whole forest floor was shaded. I also noticed that there were a lot of dead trees, both standing and fallen. Since there is such a high forest density there is more competition for sunlight which ends with a fair amount of dead plant matter. The leaves that covered the ground underneath the thin layer of snow were bouncy from the lack of interaction to compress them.

It was evident though that animals trek through this area whether often or not. There was a deer print that wasn’t too deep into the woods that made its presence very clear to my eyes.

There have also been four different occasions in the past two weeks or so where I have gone for runs and it has helped me to see how fast the weather has been changing here. The first time I went for a run it was 40 degrees with no precipitation and then the next day we got an inch of snow. A couple of days later it was almost 60 degrees and running in a sweatshirt and leggings became suffocating. Two days after that it was freezing with a light mist and strong winds. Most recently it has been 60 degrees again in the peak of the day with a warm blazing sunshine. The air has started to smell like spring too which I welcome with open arms.

These unforeseen circumstances of having to move back home have left me to appreciate the little things more. Waking up early and seeing the sun rise is calming and going for a run in the cool evening air leaves you wanting to breath more, not only because you need oxygen, but because the crispness in the air is refreshing.