Rayleigh_Scattering
Regular
- Location
- Under the arch
Being a suburban fellow, one of the things that always bothered me is that I don't "see" what's going on when I'm out in the woods.
I always wondered what I could do to get better at understanding that environment. It's all a big green splatter, so to say.
Then last summer I went up for an enjoyable weekend up at camp by myself. Two days of walking around trying to "learn" the area, and really concentrating on stretching my senses.
After coming back to town I was scheduled to help someone move, and they send me to A&W to get grease-burgers for furniture-carriers.
To get there I'm walking along a footpath and everything is ...strange:
There's only one path, leading to only one gap in the fence, and it has straight lines.
The ground is flat.
There's only sickly-looking evenly trampled grass growing on either side of that flat path.
There's only one kind of bush, planted in a line and cut flat.
There's only humans, all over the place.
There's roaring/buzzing noises everywhere.
I'm trying to figure out why this is so disorienting, and then it hits me:
I've spent the last two days looking at what grows where to try to figure out ground chemistry and water flow, looking for food/water/shelter areas as navpoints, looking at slopes and plant groupings to see where the low-energy paths are to get between those points, looking at the plants that are there to see what has disturbed/trampled them recently and not-recently, and listening to small distant noises to see who I'm sharing my space with.
And I'm seeing parts of it. This area is sunny, but dry, that's why there's grass. This one is sunny but wetter, so it has hazelnut bushes. There are no trees here because the soil is too thin. Water runs down under the soil here to the spring below. This is a regularly used track for small things. This is a regularly used track for big things. Something just walked up this slope ahead of me (bit of mud on a turned up leaf at the edge of a hoof print is still wet). Elk ran through these shrubs, west to east, earlier today (large deep pointed hoof prints, multiple sets, far apart, broken off bits of shrubs still green and juicy).
I know I'm still missing lots of things, like wind directions and light/wind changes over the day/seasons, and I don't know the navpoints on neighbouring sections (and won't until I've know their owners long enough). And I still have not caught a glimpse of any of the hoofy/toothy things whose tracks and paths I see, but I'm actually starting to get it.
Kind of a neat realization.
I'm looking forward to doing lots more of it this year.
I always wondered what I could do to get better at understanding that environment. It's all a big green splatter, so to say.
Then last summer I went up for an enjoyable weekend up at camp by myself. Two days of walking around trying to "learn" the area, and really concentrating on stretching my senses.
After coming back to town I was scheduled to help someone move, and they send me to A&W to get grease-burgers for furniture-carriers.
To get there I'm walking along a footpath and everything is ...strange:
There's only one path, leading to only one gap in the fence, and it has straight lines.
The ground is flat.
There's only sickly-looking evenly trampled grass growing on either side of that flat path.
There's only one kind of bush, planted in a line and cut flat.
There's only humans, all over the place.
There's roaring/buzzing noises everywhere.
I'm trying to figure out why this is so disorienting, and then it hits me:
I've spent the last two days looking at what grows where to try to figure out ground chemistry and water flow, looking for food/water/shelter areas as navpoints, looking at slopes and plant groupings to see where the low-energy paths are to get between those points, looking at the plants that are there to see what has disturbed/trampled them recently and not-recently, and listening to small distant noises to see who I'm sharing my space with.
And I'm seeing parts of it. This area is sunny, but dry, that's why there's grass. This one is sunny but wetter, so it has hazelnut bushes. There are no trees here because the soil is too thin. Water runs down under the soil here to the spring below. This is a regularly used track for small things. This is a regularly used track for big things. Something just walked up this slope ahead of me (bit of mud on a turned up leaf at the edge of a hoof print is still wet). Elk ran through these shrubs, west to east, earlier today (large deep pointed hoof prints, multiple sets, far apart, broken off bits of shrubs still green and juicy).
I know I'm still missing lots of things, like wind directions and light/wind changes over the day/seasons, and I don't know the navpoints on neighbouring sections (and won't until I've know their owners long enough). And I still have not caught a glimpse of any of the hoofy/toothy things whose tracks and paths I see, but I'm actually starting to get it.
Kind of a neat realization.
I'm looking forward to doing lots more of it this year.
