September 18, 2020 12:40

This isn’t the first time going to my spot. I’m well acquainted with the layout and community. The first thing I’m met with as I’m walking to my sit spot is a strand of spider silk getting caught on my arm. I’m not even seated yet and a thin fragile tendril of nature decides to caress me, making me feel like some organism was fluttering on me. But it was just a silk string, and later, I discover a small spider walking along the string towards me. I guess I never fully got it off. I put the spider on a stone to my right.

A thing to note about my sit spot before going further, is it is right in the middle of a place on campus called “The Springhouse”. It is a stone house, painted white, locked to the public, with a small, square spring in front of it. The walls of the spring, the steps down into the hollow where the house and spring lie, and the sort of sidewalk connecting all three places are made of old stones. You can tell it’s old because there is moss growing on it. The stones are a bit square, as you can see in figure 1.

It’s warm out today. And as always, thanks to my proximity to the power plant and other buildings, the constant droning reminiscent of the sound an AC makes is ever present in the background. But, there is some nicety in the chaos, I hear a frog! The sound of one frog, making his moderately high-pitched croak blessed my ears today. It sounded like it came from the Northeast wall. The cicadas are screaming every now and again, not individually, like every cicada decided it as a good idea to scream at the same time. But, that’s how cicadas are. Also, occasionally I’ll hear something akin to crickets. I can’t tell the difference between grasshoppers and crickets. Towards the end of my sit spot, I noticed I hear water draining, or something like that. I assume it’s from the drain in the spring. You can see it in figure 1.

The North to Southeast part of the Springhouse hollow is where the nature is most concentrated. I tend to focus on the spring because it interests me, and I can easily see all the critters and plants in it.  To the east wrapping around to the south there is a patch of what I assume is bamboo! They aren’t very tall, meaning they are shorter than I am. They are thin bamboo shoots, too. Most of them are a nice light green, but some are yellowed, or tan, which means that they aren’t doing as well as they could be. As mentioned before, the steps (and every other stone not a part of the house)  I sit on have a forest colored green moss growing sporadically on the tops of them, and bright minty-seafoam colored lichen on the vertical surfaces. In the northwest, there are bushes with leaves that resemble those of oak leaves. The ones near the top are turning a bit red, so it makes me wonder if as the fall progresses, the redness will too. Next to those bushes, is a plant that’s producing a fruit unlike anything I’ve seen before. I wonder what it is.

Onto the spring, the spring was lively today. I saw about 10 water striders, 5 crayfish, and countless baby newts. The newts’ legs were so small! The crayfish were beige in color, and ranged from 0.5 in to 2.5 in (big boys!).

 

Sit spot 1