Today when I arrived at my sit-spot, I had noticed that I left my pillow I usually sit on. I didn’t feel like going to get it because I didn’t think it could be that big of a deal but boy, I was wrong. Without it, even in my comfy, my butt was freezing. It didn’t help that today the wind was quite violent. The sheer power of the wind held my attention for the concentrated focus. The wind was moving the leaves around violently, both those on the ground and the leaves up in the trees. It was even strong enough that it was hitting me with a good level of power. I also noticed that the pond behind me had ripples on its surface from the wind. The stream in front of me did not have ripples in it but it is also already moving water and is protected by the trees on both sides. While writing this section of the blog, I am sure I missed many movements the wind was conducting, a number of fallen leaves, and maybe even movement in the stream in front of me.

Waterfall: The waterfall seems to remain about the same. It has a constant flow downstream. The water is also still very clear. The leaf coverage seems to be a little bit less on the surface of the water but down below still houses a plethora of leaves all decomposing slowly, just enough for me to notice their softer edges.

Tree: The tree is an object I have decided to look at from my earlier blog to my blog today and boy are these two different. In my earlier blog, the tree is much fuller with lots of beautiful leaves and is distinguishable from the rest of the tree line. It now just blends in with the other trees, a bare number of sticks attached to a trunk.

Foliage: The foliage is all but gone now. It still has a lot of leaf litter on top of it, but the high winds today have moved some of this off to reveal the true death underneath. All the foliage I have been following is died up and dead for the season.

The sky directly above me is as crystal blue as it can be. When I was watching the sky directly above me, I noticed how the blues seem to be different depending on its proximity to the sun. The sky closer to the sun has a lighter hue while the sky father away is a deeper blue, both still crazy beautiful.  I decided to also watch the sky I could see toward Siberia. Here there were some clouds I could see, quite fluffy. A combination of cumulus and stratocumulus I believe. I’m not the best with cloud identification but that’s what they look like to me from watching the video and reading the article. I had decided to focus on how strongly the wind was blowing prior to reading this question on my printout because of how violent it was.

I decided to listen with my eyes closed because in previous times at my sit-spot, this has been the best way for me to calm down and pay attention better than when I’m fighting my eyes which are constantly trying to focus on movement. Today when I began to listen with my eyes closed, I was hearing all the normal things I had before but thankfully today held some new noises to be heard. I am almost 100% sure that the first noise I noticed had to have been in the background every time I have been to this spot. I could hear from my little spot by the river, the sounds of the highway. I could hear the massive semis going by and I even heard a cars horn, they held it for quite a long time so whoever it was must’ve been angry. I am unsure as to why I have never noticed this noise before. Maybe I had but it had become such background that I had become accustomed to. The second noise was one I recognized immediately but had not heard at my spot, the call of a crow. I couldn’t tell how many crows were there, but I could tell that there was more than one because they were calling at the same time. It was a bit jarring to hear them at first because I was so focused on the sounds of the highway that their loud calls shocked me a bit. I listened to them for maybe a minute or so go on and on at one another before they went silent.

My sit-spot and I have become quite interconnected. This space on campus that I barely noticed before this assignment is now one of the areas, I know the most about. I know the organisms that exist here, and I know so many details about it. I know the shape of the tree line, the texture of the grass, the way the water moves on a typical day. I can see every detail of this space even when I am not there. That kind of connection is not something I thought I would get out of my sit-spot, but I am very happy that I have a newfound space to relive the stresses of college.