I found it a little easier for this sit-spot session to calm my mind. I’ve had a lot going on and have been very busy this past month so the stress is still lingering, but I hope life calms down soon. I think this exercise will be good for my mental health and hope my classmates have found it beneficial and fulfilling as well.

While relaxing and sitting in my spot initially, I heard mostly calming and peaceful sounds like birds chirping, the slow lapping of Carvin’s Creek. An occasional car drove past but for the most part the sounds were natural and relaxing. Once again I noticed and was surprised by how loud nature and natural sounds can be when you take time to tune other noise (including mental noise) out. The day I sat in my spot was particularly wet and damp and the air was slightly crisp which was a nice reminder that fall is here. I noticed one bird with a call that I’ve never noticed before, it was a very raspy call, not unlike a crow but different in some way.

When observing the water, I noticed something unusual about the water strider bugs in the creek. It seemed as though they were attempting to stay in the spots of sunshine coming through the trees and hitting the creek. There were multiple groups of the bugs doing this in different areas of sunlight which was interesting. They would jump then float downstream with the current, then jump back upstream. I’m not sure if they were doing this to stay warm or for some other reason, but it was interesting to observe and was something I definitely wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for my attention being paid to the water.

It was very humid the day I chose to sit and there were large water droplets on the tips of the grass and shrubs around me. They were very beautiful and I tried to get a good picture with my phone but it wasn’t able to focus and capture their beauty in person.

I didn’t even have to try to find an invertebrate to observe for the assignment because one crawled right into my lap with twenty of their closest friends. After panicking and getting most of the bugs off myself, I observed one for ten minutes. It resembled a tick, but only had six legs so I knew it couldn’t be that. It crawled, slow but steady around and dirt, occasionally stopping to graze on the ground, possibly eating. It was very small, and had a medium to dark brown body with black legs and some lighter spots on its body. I forgot to take a picture of it, but was able to identify it later as a Brown Marmorated Stink bug nymph.

The tree/shrub with berries that I observed during my last sit-spot I believe I have identified as Wintercreeper, which is a shrub. It is actually wrapped around and up the tree I sit below during my observations. The tree which I sit under has no actual leaves growing, so I’m having a harder time identifying it. The Wintercreeper berries seem to have lost a little color and have gone from brighter green to a more dingy yellow in the past couple weeks. The logs which I observed last time to see how submersion would change from session to session seem to show that the water level in the creek is lower presently than it was during my first sit-spot entry. There are also pretty, colorful leaves that have fallen into the creek since then. Lastly the small green sprouts coming up all around my sit-spot area have grown substantially and cover the area. I used PictureThis and identified them as Creeping Buttercup which is an herb. They’re very pretty and I read they like moist environments which makes sense as my spot is very wet and mostly shaded.