Date: 09/30/2019

time: 5:00 pm – 5:58 pm

Temperature: 77 F

Humidity: 76%

Today was my second day of journaling. It had just rained, and the weather around me was very calm. I saw this as an opportunity to journal, in a different environment. The immediate rain made me expect to see newness in my blog spot. For the past few days, I had been seeing a big change in the environment around campus. I went on a trip a few days ago and my ride there with everything that I witnessed made me more excited about what my blog spot had to offer. 

For the first few minutes, I spent on adjusting myself, I moved my chair, sprayed a lot of bug sprays around me (I learned a lesson the hard way). I had spent the weekend in a forest, in a survival school and being able to find a similar kind of environmental transition in Hollins was reliving. I stayed on the chair, eyes closed for the first few minutes. I could feel the humidity up against every part of my skin, the warmth that it brought, and the soft sound of drops of water from the rain that was hitting the ground nearby. This humidity reminded me of the time when I would go on evening walks with my parents back home. 

As I opened my eyes to start journaling, the first thing I noticed was the environment around me. It felt like the trees were coming right at me, everything felt a little too messy, and I couldn’t see the clarity I felt the last time I was here. My sit spot had around three-four trees right in front of me, at somewhat different angles. They have different heights and hence come down at different levels when they try to touch the ground beneath them. One of the trees has three trunks coming out of the same root, all of which are peeling in their branches. The tree directly in front of me is leaning over to the stream which is my main tree of focus. In that visual chaotic environment, I saw a few things around me that were very peculiar. I saw that there was a tree from which a branch was sticking out with completely dead leaves that looked purple, but the rest of the tree looked green enough. There was a fallen branch near the tree that looked like it had fallen from the same tree but it felt like it didn’t match up to how the rest of the tree looked like.

The other plants near me were still pretty intact. They seemed green enough to realize that fall was on its way, but at the same time, the smaller ones in the ground looked like they were turning purple and on its way to fall on the ground. The tree trunks of what I believe is a River Birch was peeling more than it was the last time. Is this an adaptation to the environment? If it is, what benefit does it do? Does this affect the way people find out the age of a tree? since it is losing its bands by peeling off? The stream that was originally filled with water in them was now almost empty. The first thing I did when I saw the stream peacefully dying out was to go see the Water Strider that I had earlier seen in my first blog. There were so few in there that it looked like a desert, although a few weeks back, it was filled with water striders on its surface. The heat lately has not just been taking away the beauty of a stream from our campus, but mainly has been destroying ways of life for thousands of animals that call it their homes.

The squirrels in the Garden were much more active than usual. There were a total of 4 squirrels that I saw during my time there. Most of them were cracking into a nut whereas some were running behind the other. I have seen a lot of squirrels cracking nuts lately, which could be a result of possible hibernation for winter? There was another sound that followed the squirrels, the crickets. I then heard a rattling like sound near me, which was similar to a snake but very different at the same time. It was hard to figure out what it was since it came from a bush near me. As night was falling, these insects were reminding me of how beautiful the nightfall is; a lullaby to the world around them. 

The ground was filled with mostly brown leaves, the grass was gone or softly camouflaged under the fallen leaves. The pathway was still muddy but not as dusty. Every leaf on the floor had ants on them. There were some ants that were huge and black, but some seemed small and red in color. Their fast-paced motion gave me a story in my head of how they must be late to reach home. For these ants, my one step meant a long distance and that gave me the proximity of us when it came to organisms. There were smaller insects on the floor that seemed to be marching along with those ants too. There were smaller flies around me that were eating my leg up. I don’t remember the last time I was not itchy in this place. The bug sprays never seem to work, even though I had long length pants on me, it never works and I come back with rashes. The mosquitoes were so small that they looked like gnats. It felt like the air was biting me on my legs instead.

I saw some other people around me who were suffering in the same way. It felt like the insects were connecting us to each other. The people and their hustling movements made it difficult for me to focus, however, their movement seemed to be creating some kind of commotion around with the squirrels. This commotion taught me a big lesson of how nature was a cycle. We all are connected in amazing ways and the presence of one of us changes the way we look at things for the other. The squirrels looked out without any kind of movement whenever they felt a human presence nearby. They looked like statues from afar.

The sky was slowly getting clearer from the rain and as I looked above I saw a big group of birds taking flight altogether to retire for the day. It was interesting how I didn’t see a lot of birds on the trees but they kept circling around for some time. Maybe they had a different destination to reach, or maybe human presence was coming in between, but either way, the earlier angry sky was changing its color which brought out a new light on the things I saw around me. The stream had a sparkling line that I saw from a far distance. I went closer to the stream and found a spider eating smaller insects. Its sudden movements made it hard to know how it was consuming its food, but within seconds it was done.  It must have been one hungry spider.

The organic smell of the Garden seemed to be absent today. The last time I went there, the smell of the plants as if they were doing its work of continuing the cycling seemed so apparent. I could practically feel the presence of the manure that was naturally being made in nature, however, its absence made me disappointed this time. Is it because of the fallen leaves that are now brown in color? Did the green leaves have something to do with the manure that nature was making for its other fellow plants? I could only smell a faint smell of rain. Just as I was looking at the floor under me, a monarch butterfly flew past me. Were the butterflies migrating south like we studied in our class? I noticed a lot fewer Dragonflies or Cicadas as compared to the last time too, they were almost non-existent this time around. It’s interesting to see how animals have their own sort of decision-making capacities. I wonder which animal decides to migrate at what point in their time and how they communicate that they would soon be migrating. It’s like there is a world that we don’t know about. 

In the midst of all of this, I decided to choose three things to follow in my sit spot just so I would get a better sense of how changes were affecting my environment. One, the plant with red cherries ( known as Winterberry if I am not mistaken) northeast side of my sit spot, the water striders in the stream and the fallen branch towards the east from my sit spot. These three things could be my points of reference. The winter berries look vastly different from how they were the last time I was here. They were originally very plump but with time they seem to have lost its red, luscious look.

As the night fell and I was there for about an hour, it was time for me to leave my spot. I gathered my things with the stories of these organisms I spent my last hour with. All of these stories are now vastly in my memory, creating its safe space, a haven I can go back to whenever I feel its need.