BLOG POST 2:

Date: 09.30.2019

Time: 18:48 – 20:00

Sit Spot

If one was needing to locate me during my sit spot time, all one would have to do is to walk ~ 15ft out from the second-floor patio of the Randy dorm. Or, if you were at the new apartments, simply walk down the huge hill towards Randy, and find the person (me!) sitting there. Or, if you indeed were quite lost and simply find yourself at Tinker, walk from the circle at the back of Tinker, towards Randy (about ~200-300 feet).

Tuning into my session was quite a process. I started by sitting with my eyes closed, and only focusing on what I was hearing, muting all of the other senses. To my right (North) I hear birds, something chirpy, not very caw-y. Up in the trees! I still have my eyes closed, but I can picture it, I always check my surroundings before closing my eyes (constant vigilance!!).

Pine Bush with a Surprise – Part 2

The birds sound tiny, and – SOMETHING IS BEHIND ME. My eyes pop open and I twist around, falling on my side (not the smoothest of moves). Nothing is there, but I’m so sure I heard something in the pine bush next to me. I take a breath, I probably imagined it, I look one last time and get back into position. Still aware of the bush behind me, I tune back in, my eyes closed and my ears open. The birds are still chirping, and I can start to hear a slight difference, one sounds bigger and there is a tiny tweeting that is different. The crickets are starting to become more and more on my radar, and I can hear the Randy AC unit faintly, and the sprinklers by the new apartments are on (when are they not?).

Next I open my nose and I feel the grass under my fingertips, the grass is dewy

Pine Bush with a Surprise

and the ground smelled wet, not over saturated, but enough that the soil smelled fresh and the scent of the grass played a light, sweet dance under my nose. My eyes are the last thing that I tune in. I open them and I look to the sky, its still blue but it’s close to dusk so its getting darker. I hear something in the bush again, so I turn to look, much calmer since I’m not as startled (and as I didn’t die during my tune in, whatever it is, it doesn’t mean any harm). Still I don’t see much of anything, the grass under the bush and the lower hanging pine needles are shaking some, like something is disturbing it. It shakes too much and is too loud to be a bug, and the needles shake too little to be a very large animal. I decide it might just be a snake, and not daring to go poking around if it is, I don’t do more than approach and peer.

The mystery as solved as it can be, I decide that I’ve begun the next portion of the activity and begin walking around.

Tire Tracks 1

 

The golf cart tracks I am following are deeper than they were last time,

the wet soil from the rain perhaps allowing the golf cart to leave deeper tracks.

Tire Tracks 2

 

Ash Tree

 

 

 

 

And the Ash tree look a little more colorful than the last I saw it. I move a little further out and I decide to get a little closer to Franks burrow’s entrance. I can’t see her, so I hope I’m not disturbing her. I don’t get close, but enough to see that her entrance is actually made of concrete, not a hole that she had dug by herself. It looks like a water grate, which is strange since it never leaks water, and its up hill so it’s not taking in water. It’s overgrown with weeds though so it probably hasn’t seen regular use in years.

Franks Burrow

There isn’t much more to look at, I chose a rather unexciting place to set up shop, but its busy enough for me! It was fun to get to explore my spot, and I really liked seeing Frank’s burrow entrance, I never would have imagined that it was human built!

 

I sit down, and as I get comfortable, I see a squirrel to my left, towards Tinker, bounding around by himself.

Squirrel 1

I instantly dub him Buster. Buster is pouncing and digging and…. Oh! He’s just hiding some nuts for the winter!

Squirrel 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s one of the adaptations that I observed. Squirrels hide their nuts because their food sources will severely lessen over the course of the Fall and Winter, so they hide food to have later (this is a behavioral adaptation. Another adaptation that I looked at was mosquitoes; many of them landed on me, but I didn’t notice until it was too late. Mosquitoes evolved to be light so that they could land and get their food without being noticed (and then chased off or squashed), and their mouths are so small and sharp that you don’t notice them biting you (the next morning, I had 9 mosquito bites on my right arm alone!). The final adaptation I observed was birds migrating. When I first opened my eyes, I noticed large birds moving towards the south. While I don’t know if those were actual migrating birds, I do know that birds that migrate are typically larger and have a very wide wing-span so that they can migrate fast enough.