Monday Night Contemplations

Today was packed full of reflective thinking. In the morning our group had a few different reading facilitations. I particularly enjoyed the facilitation on Wessels chapter and looking at history through a different lens. Picking a character from the chapter and putting ourselves in their shoes created some very interesting letters and stories.

Something today that I have been musing about, the concept of living in every moment. Sounds like an easy task. To live in the moment, to live more simply and simplify everyday life by taking the time to enjoy every moment. Eleanor brought up this topic with regards to food. Really enjoying every bite, savoring not only the flavor but all the things that went into making that food, to get it to this point. The sunlight needed to grow it, the soil, the bugs, the time and effort. Really savor it, something that can be extrapolated to every moment in the day. I often have trouble with this and find myself thinking so far ahead that the current moment escapes me. This is something I want to try to achieve, little by little, enjoying those everyday moments that many take for granted or disregard.

On a more tangible note, we picked our project topics and groups today! It is nice to finally be moving ahead with the projects, we have talked about them a bit for the past week and before today they just seemed like this foreign abstraction floating around in the ether. Now the project is in the beginning stages of becoming a reality! My group is going to focus on the stone walls in BHW. We are going to look at these walls as their own ecosystems in a way, a niche among the forest. Our goal is to examine sections of wall and the species diversity that occurs on them and whether that may change when the walls go into different habitat types. I am really excited about this project because it incorporates not only wildlife and plant life but also the human factor and history. These walls built hundreds of years ago for specific purposes may now serve as homes for a variety of plant and animal life, what those are we will hopefully determine.

I came home and after finishing up my facilitation plan and reading reflection I started skimming through a book called Stone By Stone by Robert Thorson. It is a book dedicated to the study of stone walls in New England. I came across this neat illustration showing why these walls are built right around thigh height. I always assumed that this was the minimum height needed in order to keep sheep or other grazers in. This may well be the case but it turns out it is also because that is the maximum strength point for human male to lift objects. Fascinating! Just wanted to share these thoughts, tomorrow we are diving head first into our projects!