Sit spot

I made my way recently to the Wilderness Awareness School web site where I found a forum for people practicing "Sit Spots". I had read about this in one of Tom Brown's book, when as a child his mentor sent him out to sit in the same spot every day for a long time, taking notice of everything and learning the flora and fauna that presented itself. Anyway someone in this forum posted a 30-day Sit Spot challenge, starting today, so I'm taking them up on it. I'm posting there, but I think I'll repeat the posts here, not that they're particularly linear and they're bound to get repetitive, but it's an enjoyable practice all the same.

I've been sitting for a few days already, off and on. I'm sitting near a 30 yr old beech tree in a quadrangle formed by a couple of stone walls about 60 feet long each, to the south and west, to the east is our lower driveway (dirt) followed by the hay field (about 8 acres) and then the beaver pond (about 4 acres), both of which stretch off to the North and are bordered on the south by a road with light traffic. To the North is the quince tree, a big old sugar maple, more hay field, woods. Our house is 100 or 150 ft away to the NW. On a bigger scale there are 5 or 10 old 100-150 acre farms near me, several large swamps and beaver ponds, and some more suburban housing filling in here and there -- 90 houses within a mile of me. We are at the swampy head waters of what will eventually become the Quinebaug river, then the Thames and reach the sea at New London. The land is old and stony. In the mid 1800s it was fully farmed -- no wildlife left and hardly any woods. Through the age of oil the forest has been regrowing and the wildlife filling in steadily, the latest arrivals are the bears and mountain lions, coyotes arrived maybe 15 or 20 yrs ago.

notes so far...

Sun Mar 15: Out around 9 am for a change. Sun much further "south" than I would think, so where is east exactly? We're close to the solstice. Daylight savings time, so 2 hrs after sunrise. low 30s, little wind, not cold. Lots of water birds. Ice left on pond, some white, near the road 2 chunks one maybe 70 ft x 40 ft, the other smaller. N of the pond 100 x 40 ft anchored this morning to the shore with thin ice from last night. Mallards, geese, something else. Something small that I almost thought was a fish jumping it surfaced and dove again so quickly. Small round, blackish. No binoc's so no details really. Funny call which probably comes from it. 3 red-winged blackbirds calling back and forth, 2 near the pond, one across the road. Cardinal way up on top of the maple making several different calls, all melodious. Stretches itself. Heard the chickadee's phoebe sound for the first time. blackbird chirping too. red-bellied woodpecker. one very green blade of grass. dead maple leaf with about 15 little points or stalks sticking out of what was the top, like a deformity caused by a virus or something. another one with one or two. counted about 20 wisteria shoots if I looked in a line and did a swath about 6 inches wide. frond plants a little grown. young plantain? air fresh, slight smell of mud and dead leaves. still contemplating the rises and falls and pits of the patch I'm in, it's not smooth at all. did Daddy dump stuff over here? or are there rocks under there? I find it comforting, this lack of smoothness. But familiarity is coming over me, the patch is becoming comforting in its familiarity. Saw a spider web in the distance -- are they building already? (later. diving bird might be a bufflehead. need a telescope)

Fri Mar 13: Fat robin sited on my way down, later chirping in the maple? 2 ducks male and female mallards waddle across the ice and back into the water. pond really low, chairs showing, mud exposed between island and lodge. saw goose this AM on lodge. dark big bird flies over, hawk? look at dead leaves some more: awfully small maple leaf. 3 inch long, 1 inch wide leaf. very pale beech leaf? most are nuttier brown. found my lost beech nut husk, or another one. notice ground smells of mud / spring. slightly. sun, blue sky, a few small clouds, cold (around 38), slight nw wind. lots of leaves/sticks along the 'ridge' near the quince. steady rw blbd calls, 2 going back and forth. 5 pm. shadow lengthening. maple shadow reaches pond. 1,2, 3 herbs growing? say 'frond', bedstraw, and the purply soft one, deep green, wilty leaves about 1/4 inch across, opposite, maybe hairy, look thicker than the others. was the bedstraw blooming? or another set of leaves? quince stick broken, very green at the place where the bark broke.

Thurs Mar 12: A little round object like a bit of dog kibble: turd of some sort. Some more in a pile further away. Tan: old? Specks in it. Ice is melting, a small bird disappears under the water, pops back up, disappears again. Not a merganser. My head says buffle. But it's something else. Steady wind from the northwest. Cold. Ground is frozen again. Sun is setting behind me, surprisingly far south or not where I thought west was. You can tell by the house's shadow straight down the field. Reddish spot near the island -- the water is low, black muck exposed all along the edges. The leaves aren't quite blowing in the wind, until a bigger gust arrives. Blackbird flies by. A steady chir chir, or dewitt dewitt: chipping sparrow? a group flies away swooping playfully off to the alder grove next to the pond. A few small clouds, lots of blue. Another beech nut husk, cant see the first one now. I can only see the ground in one place near me, a small black spot showing. Mostly it's dead leaves, grass, shoots: so many wisteria! I could count how many in a square foot, it'd be a lot. Broken bark on the quince. Still no birds in the beech. Something else is growing under the beech, something woody. I get cold in about 20 minutes. Two days ago I sat for 1/2 hr thinking it was 15 min, and a car did a wheely right there.

Sun Mar 8th. Greens: A whorled group of stems 2" long with leaves (or is it a divided leaf?) almost opposite, toothed irregularly, stem is slightly grooved on top. Grass. Bedstraw. Something like a strawberry leaf but not. All around 6 to 8 inch shoots of wisteria, usually with 2 joints / leaf buds. Beech leaves rattling. Dead beach and maple leaves, lacy maple seed wings. A beech nut, with a white worm inside about 1 mm wide by 20 mm long. Field is brown. Some snow patches. Pond is white and black, open water patches and a stretch where the stream comes in. Tick now crawling on my forefinger. Saw a small black spider, too. Bird calls -- red-bellied woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, ducks, others not sure. Flock of something arrived overhead, probably blackbirds. Clouds thickening. NW winds. 50s. 4 pm.