Going out on the Noland Trail, I decided not to stick to the
path. I had gone separately from the class, so I couldn’t be sure if I was even
in the same area they had been in to begin with. I went pretty far off the
trail, just out into the trees and fallen leaves. It had been sort of rainy so
I had to watch my step, and a few times my shoes started to get sucked under.
Thankfully most of the really muddy spots were covered with the leaves so the
going wasn’t too rough. I had been out there earlier in the semester, and I
couldn’t be sure if it was the same part of the trail but it seemed similar
enough. I had been looking for lizards and salamanders then, as a part of a
class project, so I had been more focused on overturning every log I found and
avoiding spider webs. This time I was still keeping a sharp eye for spiders,
and after thinking a while snakes as well, but I still managed to come across a
part of the trail further out. I had managed to skip over a good part of it,
and after following it for another few minutes I was looking out onto a small
body of water. I don’t know the layout of the Noland trail very well at all,
and the angle I had from the trail wasn’t very good, but it appeared to just be
a small lake or pond. No animals as far as I could tell, and the top layer of
water was grimy looking and oily.
I
didn’t want to linger too long. The place was pretty gross and thinking back to
the example we had been given, I thought finding a living thing to observe
would result in some more inspiring note taking. That pond was very dead. Maybe
there was something living at the bottom, but the ground between the trail and
the edge of the water was a swamp. I also really didn’t want to get very close.
I thought of maybe throwing something in. There were small burs all among the
dead leaves, so I grabbed a handful and threw them in as best I could. Most of
them were too light and missed the water entirely, while the rest just ended up
sitting on top of the water. I don’t know if I should have expected them to
sink, because I did, but I started to wonder if that oily sheen it had was some
kind of film on top of the water that was keeping them afloat. Could there
really be something living in that? It had been gross before, but now I
suspected it wasn’t even a natural body of water at all.
I
left after that, followed the trail back to the beginning and kept my eyes
peeled for anything but I guess it was too cold. I heard a few birds, but whenever
I looked for them I didn’t see any. It was all a little disappointing, and
really all I could think about later was finding a long stick to see if I could
stir up anything from within that cloudy water I had found. Trying to think of
the experience again later, I tried to take the experience as a learning
experience. Even within nature, there are places without any life in them. If
that had really been a natural occurrence, if that water hadn’t actually been
polluted and somehow the water had gotten that way through natural causes, then
just maybe there had been something living there. I imagine it was only
mosquito larvae or something, though.
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