Date: 27 October 2008
Time: 1300 Hours
Location: Corner of Liberty and Trade Street
Weather: Sunny, slightly warm, probably close to 60 degrees
Duck’s Playground
For class today, we have ventured to the very end of the Mill Race. After traveling through cement and falling through waterfalls, the water finds itself pooled up in a very modern area. Cement ledges circle the pond and I find myself seated at the edge of one now, looking down below me into the water. The smell is less than desirable because the water is, other the water that that is falling down the waterfalls, sitting still. Leaves rest on the top of the water and some discarded cups and plastic bottles hide away in the corners of some of the cement nooks. Looking down below me, suspended between the walls, there are spider webs, 4 or 5 in a row all lined up. I hope those spiders can swim. Across the pond from me, sits Jane, the fall foliage in full color behind her. As I have been walking across campus for the past week or so, I have been dreading the time that these leaves all fall and we are left with only the bare branches. Anyway, my gaze follows the three male ducks that are in the pond now. I laugh as they go from side to side of the pond, wherever the people are in hopes of receiving a bite of food from the gazing people. When they decide to move upstream to the west, I turn my attention to other things. One thing I think about is how, even though there is an extremely busy street just in front of me, I have not noticed it until now. The sound of the water and the entertainment from the ducks has distracted me from the rushing traffic ahead. Jane has moved around the side of the pond and her and Estella are both behind me out of my view. Looking to my west, I spot the ducks again. Two of them are up on the side now and the final one is stuck below. I noticed that the loner in the water has no white band under the green on his neck and I wonder if it is because he is younger? After talking to my wonderful and brilliant Professor though, I find that it is because he is a hybrid bird, bred out of more domesticated females that do not produce great fliers. This lack of flying strength is demonstrated when he attempts to join his comrades on the cement bank a few feet above him. After trying to make the flight and while his friends just watched him fail, the duck finally gave up. Luckily for him, there was a miniature ramp built up alongside the cement wall that led from the water to the top of the bank. He was smarter than I would have given him credit for and he used this ramp to climb up to his friends.
Date: 30 October 2008
Time: 1330 Hours
Location: North side of the Mill Stream between Hatfield Library and Rogers Music Hall
Weather: Over cast and cold—fleece jacket weather
Never Want Fall to End
Before work I decided to leave my dorm early make a nature observation on my way over. This past week, with the exception of yesterday and today, has been beautiful—blue skies and perfect temperatures. Today calls for a fleece jacket and as I sit on the north side of the Mill Stream between the library and Rogers Music Hall, I wonder how the 3 ducks (2 males and 1 female) are not freezing. Adaptation I suppose. Growing just to my left (west of me), there are shards of grass spurting from the ground. Some of the widest pieces are more than an inch across, but they all have the same general shape—wide in the middle and coming to a sharp point at the top. The colors are brilliant, all different types of green, but it is not something that you would notice with just a glance. It would take a careful observer to really absorb the spectrum of green. I have been sitting here now for over 10 minutes and I just noticed the spider suspended among the plants leaves. It is not the spider commonly seen though because this one is much more petite with spindly legs that all stretch in front of it. One of the first things that I did notice though was that this plant has white strands fraying from it sides, as though it were shedding. I wonder why.
Looking about, my focus turns to a tree to my west. With half of its leaves green and the other half a gorgeous variation of red, orange and yellow, it just reminds me of how much I love fall. Looking up its branches, my gaze falls to one spot of leaves that are bunched together in one ball. My first thought on what it could be goes back to the Mistletoe that we saw on our nature walk last week. I then thought back to one of our first nature walks ever, when we went around Olin and found the squirrel’s nest. Perhaps that is what this is. Maybe I will have Greyson climb up there and find out for me. ☺
Date: 31 October 2008
Time: 1420 hours
Location: northwest corner of campus, on a bench snuggled in the corner of collins, facing the quad.
Weather: Overcast, has finished raining, sun is shining through the fog-like clouds
Halloween: Bumblebees, nests, and falling leaves
On the sidewalk in front of me, there are two moms walking. One of them holds a small child dressed up as a bumblebee—so adorable. As another family walks in the opposite direction towards them, they call out exchanges of “Happy Halloween!” to each other. Meanwhile, as I sit on the bench so picturesquely placed beneath two trees, leaves fall around me. They are red and there are thousands of them on the ground around me, especially behind me—a red sea, so to say. I had been thinking earlier about how much I wish that fall would never end, how I wish that the spectrum of leaves would stay on the trees forever just as they are. As I sit here now though, the leaves above me being half-way done with their shedding, I realize how awful that would be. Imagine how much we would miss if that were the case! There are all sorts of good things to be seen when the branches of the trees are barren, like the nest that is in the tree to my west right now. At the very top, there is a nest of some sort, a bundle of leaves all stuck there on the branch. To my east, a crow cries from the top of Waller Hall and then flies over my head. In the lawn in front of me, two squirrels jump back and forth in search of buried treasures. My inward thoughts wish them luck in their quest. A bit further down, there is a large tree with a dark brown trunk, but its leaves are a beautiful golden yellow color. It contrasts the red leaves of the tree in the foreground of my view. And look! A Caspian Tern has decided to grace the Willamette campus with his presence. What a magnificent animal ☺
Date: 1 November 2008
Time: 2030 Hours
Location: south side of Kaneko, sidewalk
Weather: Dark out, chilly, wet from previous rain
Sluggish Weather
The rain has been going on and off today. It would rain for a few minutes and be fairly breezy and then it would stop and I even wore my flip-flops outside to go on a trip to Quiznos. Now though, it is dark and I have on normal tennis shoes in place of the flip-flops. The ground is wet and I realize that this is the prime time to see worms and slugs on the sidewalks, sliding around and trying to find a place dryer than the ground that has absorbed all of the rain. As I am walking, I spot exactly what I was hoping to see. It is one of the largest slugs that I have seen, except for the Banana Slug that I saw at a horse show last summer in Sherwood. The one here, we shall call him Sammy, is maybe a little over 2 inches long. Sammy is an earthy color, maybe a slimy form of tan. I do not really know how to describe his color actually. His body is round and comes to an end in a tip. At the other end is Sammy’s head and it narrows to a flat spot and then has two antennae that stick out in separate directions. I wonder what Sammy eats. Perhaps it is fruit like the Banana slug. Either way, as I leave, I make sure to step over him and hope that he has a good evening.
Date: 2 November 2008
Time: 1000 Hours
Location: Deepwood Estate
Weather: Overcast, turned to rain eventually
Longest Day of my Life?
It could quite possibly have been the longest day of my life. No, actually, that is probably an exaggeration. It has however been a very exhausting day. I have just spent the past 5 hours of my life pulling ivy and blackberry bushes from the earth at the Deepwood Estate. It was not too much work until it started raining. That is when it was not as rewarding to dig through the fallen leaves to find the hidden ivy roots and pull them out. When that was rewarding though, I almost enjoyed doing it. I did wonder though about the disturbance we were causing. In the beginning, at 10 A.M., there were 5 of us, all trekking around in the leaves off the sides of the path. In the next hour there was one more of us making it 6 people that are walking around in the plants, trying to only take out the invasive species. Beneath all of the fallen and brown leaves, there are little curls of ferns trying to grow. Our coordinator, while leading us to our work space, had pointed to large patches of much larger ferns and said that once the ivy were gone, there would be more patches of ferns that would be able to grow. I had never seen ivy as an invasive species that would keep things from growing, but now that I know the plant much better, I understand. It is not just a plant with a few leaves that grow out of the ground. The roots spread across the ground; they do not grow deep into it. Digging into the leaves to reach the roots, I uncovered several things, most of which I did not want to find. I saw several different types of spiders today, the worst of which hitched a ride home on my pant leg and I did not discover the large, black spider until I was getting into the shower. I was definitely not pleased, to say the least. Anyway, there was also a pale white insect, a grasshopper or cricket that was not happy about my activities off the path. When I would pull up a root that would bring up the dry dirt underneath it, I would see many rolly-pollies, or Pillbugs I guess would be the technical term. There were also 3 miniature worms that I saw. They were like baby earth worms, all very active in the way that they would crawl around, lifting their heads (I assume it is their heads) in search of who knows what. Other things that I saw plenty of were mushrooms. There were the really round ones that had a tan background and then dark red spots all around it. The other kind that I saw were much more plain; they were a pale tan color and were flatter on their tops. I cannot tell which of the mushrooms they would be in my field guide and I do not see any like the round mushrooms in there.
