Saturday October 17, 10:40 am.

I was walking half asleep from the student village apartments when the cold breeze swept through my sweater and awakened me. As I took the stairs on the left of the Cocke building and came down to my beautiful sit spot, I noticed that the ground was all yellow, covered with the dried fallen leaves. It was pretty windy, so I saw some other leaves fall off of the trees beside my chair. It is unusually quiet in my space today. I can hear only a few birds chirping, some insects and a lawn mower somewhere that was making a lot of noise and distracting me. My sit spot looks like it got hit by a storm recently. Everything looks so dry and dead, it makes me really sad! The Beale Creek in particular looked really unhappy. The shrubs on the bank of the creek seem like they somebody had tried to destroy them all on purpose. The plants with orange and purple flowers which I had seen for the last two times don’t have a single flower anymore. The leaves of that plant are now starting to turn yellow, and some are even starting to dry.

My focal object that has changed the most is the creek. The water levels seem to have gone down pretty drastically. The part of the creek right in front of me is covered with dry, fallen leaves. My other focal object, the tree, has not changed much except for the fact that the leaves are now starting to change color and are falling off a lot. Last but not the least, my beautiful little shrubs on the banks of the creek have unfortunately lost all of their flowers and leaves are turning yellow, as I mentioned earlier.

When I had my eyes closed, I could hear the cold wind blowing. The insect noises that I was hearing earlier became clearer and louder. I also heard playful chirping of the birds. For some reason, it sounded like the noise was coming from a tiny little bird. I am not sure why I associated that noise with a little bird. I could hear the leaves on the ground crunching a lot, courtesy of our friendly little squirrels. Although I have been seeing how things around my sit spot have changed over the last couple of weeks, my imagination of my space was quite different when I had my eyes closed. In my imagination, the Beale garden was all green, there were no fallen leaves on the ground and the ground was actually covered with beautiful lush green grass. The creek was flowing perfectly with very little leaves inside the water, and the shrubs on the side of the creek were green and had their beautiful purple and orange flowers. My subconscious must be telling me that I actually prefer summer over winter, but I am not ready to accept that fact yet!

For today, I observed the creek right in front of me. I walked around to look at the creek from different places around the Beale garden. There was this one spot under the little bridge where I had looked a few weeks before, where the rate of flow was pretty low. However, today it seems like the flow rate has increased compared to two weeks ago if I correctly remember the observation I had made back then. I wonder how that could happen. I was also trying to see if I could find any fish or snail inside the creek without actually having to go in the water and turn the rocks around. That’s the last thing I would want to do on this cold windy day… I could not see any fish or snail in the water and I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping to see a few snails at least. As I was observing the flow of water, I felt very peaceful and calm. I also noticed the stream bed composition of the creek, which was mostly silt, sand and gravel and occasionally some boulders at some spots.

I identified two plant species and an insect using inaturalist. The insect that I identified was a striped fishing spider. Its scientific name is Dolomedes Scriptus. As their name suggests, I found out that these spiders are found near water bodies- which makes sense that I saw it because there’s a Creek in my sit-spot. They apparently eat small fishes and tadpoles. I also found an interesting fact that if these spiders get chased, they can dive and remain under water for some time. The second identification I made was a American yellow-wood tree whose scientific name is Cladrastis Kentukea. These species are found in the Southeastern US states. One interesting fact about this tree was that it takes 5 or 6 years until the first flower appears. The third species I identified was dogwood. Its scientific name is Cornus. I found out that dogwood is native to eastern US states and that they do best in moist, slightly acidic soil.

Dogwood

Yellow wood

Fishing spider