11/3/19 1:53 pm 55°F sunny and breezy

 

When I approached my spot there were people taking graduation photos, so I scooted down the bank a little bit until they were done. I tuned into the sound of the creek. It sounded like it was coming from one of those noise machines people spend lots of money on. The sound of running water has always been relaxing to me so it was easy to pick out among the other sounds. A breeze was blowing, occasionally rustling the leaves in the trees and on the ground and making them fall out of the trees. The road coming onto campus and Williamson road were both fairly busy. Most likely it was traffic from family weekend leaving campus and travelers just passing through Roanoke. I think this week/weekend was supposed to be the peak leaf peeping time. It was pushed back due to warmer temperatures and leaves not changing colors. The people taking graduation pictures were to the left of me. They weren’t very loud, but I was able to hear their conversation at times. I also heard a dog barking, but I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, maybe on campus or in the houses near campus. The usual airplane and heard flying overhead, and due to the lack of leaves on the trees I was able to see it this time.

The riffle I chose to follow was still flowing steadily. I wonder if it will end up freezing when it gets really cold. The ivy climbing up the tree had not grown very much, if at all. It was still very green and had all of its leaves though. The two trees I chose to observe behind me had changed the most out of my three. The leaves had completely changed colors to reds/yellows/oranges, and most had fallen off. I’m thinking that the rest will be falling off very soon.

I think that you become much more aware without our sight. One of our major senses is sight and without it we have to rely more heavily on the others such as hearing, smell, and feeling. I heard lots of cars, like I said before. I also heard the creek. It is a major element in my sit spot, so it only makes sense. I also heard what sounded like a woodpecker. In the position I was sitting in, I was in the direct sunlight. It felt so warm and cozy and made me extremely drowsy. I could have taken a nap right there. Right when I would start to feel like I was getting too warm, a breeze would blow through and cool me off. When we were tasked with not using our eyes, I immediately thought of the story Renee had told the Monday lab class about a blind man who had hiked the Appalachian Trail with just his dog. It is easy for us to just open our eyes to figure out what something is, but for that man it wasn’t. He had to use his other senses to figure things out.

I devoted my attention to a very dead looking tree (pictured left and featured). It looked like your stereotypical Halloween tree. Like it belonged next to a haunted house with ravens and crows perched up in it. It had no leaves and most of the branches were broken off. Some of the bark looked as if it had been stripped off. A crack down the middle of the trunk of the tree revealed that it was mostly hollow inside. I wondered how it was still standing and how long it had been dead. No birds or other animals, such as squirrels, that I could see interacted with it.

A lot has changed within my sit-spot over these past couple of weeks. There are a lot more leaves on the ground, though the grass is still very green. I am also now able to see Williamson Road from my sit spot due to all the leaves falling off the trees. The leaves have almost entirely changed colors as well. There were less birds around, less chatter from them. Probably because it is getting much colder.

I left my sit spot at 3:17pm.