Journey in Place: Frame of Reference

Map at the Park Entrance

As I sit at my desk writing I am a bit distracted by the large flocks of Cedar Waxwings and American Robins that have descended on my yard this cold January morning. They are dropping from their sunny perches in the trees down to our small pond that has abundant flowing water, a scarcity today when the temperatures are barely warming up from the teens of last night. They are also feeding ravenously on the berries of the Chinese Holly and Japanese Privet that line my yard. Like them or not, the large and established (albeit exotic) bushes do provide food and shelter for hungry birds.

In our 2nd Journey In Place exercise, Janisse asked us to put our Place in spatial perspective, identifying the location, bioregion and boundaries, and then decide to whom the study should be dedicated. Then came the toughest part, for me at least--we were asked to sketch a map of our Place. After walking the trails and doing some research, I came up what I think represents the way I view my Place. I wish I had the patience to carefully sketch and print beautiful letters, but that just doesn't seem to be me. I get impatient. Here is my map:

My Map

So, about my place. My place is the Oconee Forest Park, a natural area on the University of Georgia Campus. It is located within the bioregion of the Southern Outer Piedmont of Northeast Georgia and is in the Upper Oconee River Watershed. The park consists of 60 acres of hundred-year-old trees on rolling hills that edge a 15-acre manmade lake. It is bordered by an unused railroad track, tennis courts and band practice fields on the west side, a highway ("The Loop) on the south and east, and College Station Road and the Intramural Fields to the North. It contains two manmade lakes, one large one (Lake Herrick) and a much smaller one (Little Lake Herrick). Lake Herrick is fed by a small stream that catches runoff from the 5 Points neighborhood on the north side, where I live. Water from Little Lake Herrick up above, supplies water to Herrick Creek that runs through a ravine and down into the larger lake below, where Herrick Creek picks up again and flows into the North Oconee River to the northeast. 

Boardwalk on hill leads to Bridge across the lake

Big, beautiful oak on the Lake Trail, by exercise equipment

Intramural Field on a frosty morning

One of the platforms the looks over the lake

Mountain Bike Trail and Power Line Cut

Herrick Creek

Hiking and mountain bike trails wind around the lakes, and through and around the forest. Service roads serve as wider trails and allow access for maintenance equipment. Facilities on site include fishing docks, a boat ramp, picnic areas, and a ropes course. A wooden boardwalk next to ball courts leads to a bridge across a narrow arm of the lake. The area serves as an outdoor classroom for forestry, biology and ecology students, and is popular with runners, walkers, bikers, dog walkers, photographers, artists, and nature lovers, both students and the general community. Oconee forest Park is an ebird hotspot. 

Kingfisher on one of the platforms in the lake

Killdeer Chick in an Intramural Field

Stinkhorn Fungi

Fox

Heron in the Lake on a Misty Morning

Snake Tree

Tree Frogs by Little Lake Herrick

Bloodroot Patch

While preparing to draw my map I looked at existing maps of the area online and discovered that some of the unmarked trails actually have names! I learned that my "comfort spot" is located on "Tranquility trail", which makes perfect sense because it exudes peace and calm. "Tranquility Trail" follows the contour of the hillside and over a ridge to the "Birdsong Loop", another favorite and aptly named trail. On a map, I think the Oconee Forest Park looks kind of like a heart. I like the image of it providing lifeblood to the community through physical and mental health, protected habitat, and its place in the watershed, channeling water to the Upper Oconee River. I picked it as my Place because of its proximity to home, and because it was a lifesaver for me during the Covid pandemic when everything else was closed and I needed a place to breathe and think. It has provide me with endless hours of peaceful contemplation birdsong, and discovery. I would like to dedicate my Journey In Place to the people who had the foresight to create this oasis (one of whom was my friend, Walt Cook--more on him and his role another time), the people who are working currently to maintain and improve it, and to my fellow travelers who share it with me.

Dailyappreciation

 

I recently got my copy of Patti Smith's "A Book of Days". It is a collection of a year of her photos and thoughts, memories and celebrations from her Instagram page, most of them created during the pandemic. There is a page for every day of the year. I've really enjoyed it so far and decided to read it one day at a time to fully appreciate the images and messages. Reading her introduction, it dawned on me that I had been doing something similar this past year with my photos and my life. I would never dream of comparing myself to Patti Smith, except in recognizing an intentional practice that we both seemed to have turned to in what she called, "deeply uncertain times". She has been in the habit of taking a photo and writing every day for years. I am a newcomer.

I have really been struggling for a while, and especially so in the last 2 years. My optimistic goals to power through the early part of the pandemic with nature walks and writing only worked so long. But then Covid and its variants stayed around and kept coming, and our activities took so long to return to normal, in addition to unbelievable political craziness, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, fire, drought, war, shootings, riots, and ecological disasters, including the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake in my home state, I just couldn't keep it up. I tried. I composed dozens of "inspired" essays in my head when I took walks or gardened or went birding, but by the time I got home, I found that most of what I wanted to say felt unimportant and trite along side of the huge issues all around me and I'd let it go. As a result, I rarely posted in my blog. Eventually, I didn't really feel like going on those hikes, or even leaving home unless I had to. I was tired, and didn't see the point. I'm pretty sure I was depressed. 

On New Year's Day 2022 I decided that I needed to do something to pull myself out of the funk. I recognized that I always feel good when I am photographing nature, especially, the tiny things. I felt that a good way to start would be by making myself get out and find at least one thing that caught my attention or made me feel good every day, take a photo, and post it on Instagram with the hashtag #dailyappreciation. Posting made me accountable to other people and it would make it harder for me to ditch my personal goal, and Instagram doesn't necessarily require any text. Brevity is good. Some days I didn't go much further than my back yard, posting photos of a bug on the window, birds at the feeder, or lichen on twigs that fell from the big water oak. But the project forced me to look for something outside of the news, and that felt good. Most of the time I took pictures just with my phone. As the year progressed, and our activities returned to the new normal, we traveled and started visiting with family and friends, attending concerts and festivals again. I flew to visit my mom for the first time in 2 years. Sometimes out of cell phone contact, or traveling in the car cross country, there were days that I scrambled to find a picture and post it. But I was determined. There were a few days that the weather was bad or the day got away from me because I was too busy (a good thing!), and I dug into my photo archives for something memorable from that day sometime in the past, but I tried not to lean too much on that option. 

I started to hear comments from people who thanked me for my posts and that they looked forward to them as something beautiful or interesting each day. Their feedback buoyed me. I had a mission now and did not want to let my followers down. My meditative practice was spreading good energy, not just to me but to my friends. And so I posted every day, sometimes twice, for one year. The resulting body of work made me feel good and looks like a beautiful patchwork quilt in the Instagram layout. If I can ever figure out how to print the year, I will. It would be a cool poster. 

So here I am, a year later, still working on tuning out the noise. It's still not easy, and I'm afraid the uncertain times will be with us for a long time--maybe forever. But I'll keep looking for those things to appreciate and to steer myself out of the malaise, and I'll work at getting my deep thoughts out of my head and onto the page. Maybe not every day--that gets to be a grind! But I'll keep working and looking for the little things. And I'll keep sharing with my friends, because their feedback makes me feel good, and we all need a little beauty and love in our lives. 

 

So Long 2020

A Family of Canada Geese

I was looking through a collection of the year's photos in the paper the other day and I was shocked at the number of major, traumatic events that I had completely forgotten. They seemed years ago, and yet they happened sometime within the last 12 months. To say that this has been a tough year is an understatement. All of us feel dazed and tired, and no wonder. Our world has changed completely, and even if you're not struggling merely to survive or keep a roof over your head or feed your family, you also have had to develop coping mechanisms to deal with the stress of this constant state of emergency. We can't be with our family and friends. We can't do the things we're used to doing, like going to school and work. Our government is in turmoil. Nothing is normal. So people meditate or go running, or read lots of books, or watch everything on Netflix, or play music, or write, or knit or sew or cook. Whatever it takes to get through this. It's all better than "doom scrolling", which I have been guilty of quite a bit during this "Dumpster Fire" of a year. My personal plan has included lots of baking (I've definitely put on the Covid Extra 19), sewing face masks, and trying to stay connected to my family and friends online. But the most therapeutic practice for me has been to take photos in the woods and in my yard. This is an assortment of images from nature that have brought me peace this year. I hope they do the same for you. Let's hope for a better, safer, kinder new year. 

Baby Phoebes on a Branch

A Barred Owl Watches me from High

A Turtle Basks on a Log

Flowers on a Beautyberry Bush (Calicarpa americana)

A Great Big (Blue) Fishing Spider in a Hollow Tree

Black Rat Snake

Bloodroot Bloom (Sanguinaria canadensis)

A Brown Creeper

Brown Thrasher Adult feeding its Young

Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and a Milkweed Bug

A Very Cold Cardinal

A Gray Catbird Chatters from the Bushes

A Flock of Cedar Waxwings Sunning in a Treetop

A Chipmunk Scurries up a Tree

A Monarch Butterfly Chrysalis With Shiny Gold

A Column Stink Horn Fungus in the Leaves Looks like an Alien Being

Cottontail Rabbit

Vivid Blue Eastern Bluebird

Eastern Meadowlark Stretches to Look Over the Tops of the Grass

Eastern Phoebe with a Katydid

Towhee Gives me the Stinkeye

A Pair of Feathers from a Northern Flicker

Fox in the Woods

Tell me these Oak Leaves Don't Look Like Frog Feet!

Frost Rimmed Leaf

Full Moon

Stunning Yellow Goldfinch

A Great Blue Heron on a Frigid Morning

Great Purple Hairstreak in our Butterfly Garden

Green Anole with Blue Eyeshadow

Green Treefrogs 

Hermit Thrush has Caught a Hornet for Lunch

Horned Grebe with Fiery Red Eyes

Carolina Jessamine After the Rain

Jōrō Spider, Black Morph (solid black legs)

Kingfisher

Lacy Leaf

Late Season Monarch Feeds on Salvia

Least Skipper Feeding on Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia)

Frilly and Hairy Textures of Lichen

Mantis Waits

This is Not an Alligator (Made You Look!)

Orchard Oriole Sings 

Pollen Rings on the Lake

Raccoon Stares at me Through the Poison Ivy

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-spotted Purple Butterfly Sucking Minerals from the Wet Sand

An Early Winter Robin

Fancy Rose-breasted Grosbeak Male Visited our Yard

Ruby-throated Hummingbird Rests

Scarlet Tanager, Bright Red Against Green Leaves

Great Big Skink (Its front leg is just underneath)

Snapping Turtles Have Interesting Eyes

The Orioles That Visit Our Yard Didn't Care When it Snowed in February

Pretty Little Song Sparrow

Blue Spots and Yellow Strips on a Sulphur Butterfly Caterpillar

Dozens of Swallowtail Kites Showed up Put on a Show at a Local Farm, Feeding on Insects

Tiger Swallowtail and a Bumblebee Share a Thistle

A Tufted Titmouse Has Found a Spider's Eggsac

Metallic Woodboring Beetle 

Wood Thrush Sings and Sings

Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar Shows Red Stripes When Curled