H.R. Waller
Date: 11 September 2008.
Time: 1055
Place: The Mill Race facing toward the library with Goudy behind me.
Weather: 74 degrees and sunny.

I’m sitting in the shade of a beautiful branching tree, my back leaning against its sturdy trunk. The bark is a clean white color with little patches of brown underneath in places where the white wrapping has come away. It reminds me of a Christmas present all wrapped up that someone has tried to peek at only to find that beneath the paper is a plain cardboard box. The leaves are heart shaped and arranged randomly, but thickly around the branches. This is a pretty tall tree and there are 3 more like it in various spots around the river. To my right, directly opposite the UC is a large bed of various plants and flowers. One type that caught my eye right away were the 4 foot tall red ones whose stems are as thick as a pencil and whose leaves are very skinny and oblong and travel all the way up to the last 6 inches of the stem where the brilliant red buds the shape of bluebells begin and finish off the top. These were obviously planted there deliberately as can be inferred from their neat and ideally situated arrangement. Next to them is a group of similar looking plants that have purple flowers in the place of the red, but rather than having about 10-15 flowers on each stalk, these have 5 slightly larger ones in the more typical 5 petal flower shape. Neither flower is found in Audubon, but the red one resembles a Fireweed, though I know it is not. Across from me on the other bank is a big group of ducks all huddled down appearing to be asleep in the shade. A few are standing up. Can they sleep standing? There is a perfect row of 5 trees almost twice as tall as Smith, the building behind them. The trees look like Western Red Cedars, with huge buttressed trunks and flat, drooping needles providing perfect shade.
Photo courtesy of Google Images.