Trip to Aullwood Audubon

Today we went to Aullwood Audubon to learn more about nature and how it is a community, where everything is reliant on each other. Producers like plants which create their own food are food for some consumers, such as animals, which are food for even more consumers. Without one consumer, other consumers might not exist. And without them an ecosystem could collapse. There are also decomposers, which ensure that the buildup of dead material can be broken back down into nutrients for the living. At Aullwood Audubon we walked through the forest with binoculars, looking at all of these different things and seeing how we can identify them. We found several species of birds, trees, shrubs, fungi, and animals. At one point along the trail we stopped by some water and used small nets to see if we could catch anything. We quickly were able to find a variety of species, somewhere between five and seven species. For me I was able to find three or four small ones. One of them was a long and thin bug with even thinner legs to move around with. In an attempt to put one of these in a tube our guide accidentally bumped lightly. This light bump was enough to kill it, however.

I found sifting through the water and actually finding living creatures of different species interesting, but more interesting was the snake they showed us when we got back to the main building. It was a Black Rat snake, if my memory serves me correctly. We were allowed to handle the snake and let it slither across our arms. I was a little nervous to hold in because I didn’t know what the texture of its scales would be, as I never handled a snake before. When it was in my hand it wasn’t so bad. They also told us some information about the type of snake, like how it knew better to attack us simply because of size difference. The snake knew that we’re simply too large for it to even hope to stand a chance. Once it was in our hands it was much more comfortable with us being there. After this we went over to the barn and saw some of the animals there, then went back to DRSS. Once there we wrote a contemplation or meditation script about something in nature. Mine I based somewhat on what we did earlier today. The rest of this post is what I wrote.

I am standing on a balcony looking out into the forest surrounding me, trying my hardest to localize where the songs sung by the birds are coming from. Picking the tiny shapes of the birds proves itself difficult when matched against the hundreds of trees and thousands of leaves that they could hide behind. When I find them, I look closer with my binoculars and see their unique colors and figures. I’m only able to see them for a few seconds before they lift of the branches of the trees and disappear from sight behind the thick layer of leaves.

I know there are hundreds or thousands of birds in the woods around me, spread out for miles until there are only a couple around. In order to see them all at once you would have to go so high you wouldn’t be able to see them at all, simply because of their small size. That far away a bird could be completely visible, not blocked by anything, but yet be invisible to the naked eye. Maybe with a telescope one would be able to zoom far enough in to see the birds once again. But even then, you would only be able to see one or a few at a time. Only in my mind could I be able to see all of them, understanding their existence and participation in the surrounding environment.

Centralized in the middle of the thought is me, still standing on the balcony wondering where all the birds really are, only knowing that they are out of my vision but not my mind.

Us standing on the balcony where I based the contemplation script off of