#Earthschooling365: Day Fifty-One
Inner Work Meditation (Heart): When I saw this cat sitting on a tree in the woods near my home I immediately thought about all the feline misidentification stories I have heard over the years. I used to volunteer for a wildlife education organization and we would frequently hear or receive reports about cougar sightings in Iowa. Most of the time these sightings would simply be house-cats or even dogs. I always wondered how a person could mistake a house-cat for a cougar but then I saw this scene and I knew. One does not expect to see a house-cat sitting so wild-like in wild areas. This cat is even perched in a typical wild-cat manner and if you were riding by quickly in a car or bike you could easily mistake it for something else. I actually had to look twice to check what it was. Sometimes we do this in life, too. We don’t really listen very carefully or we walk by someone quickly or assume what they are saying or doing fits into a familiar box. This is often where a lot of misunderstandings come from. Take some time this morning to meditate on how you can take some extra time to really see each situation and person for what they are instead of letting “triggers” or assumptions block your opportunities of great connections with others. Then, make sure you practice this at least once today.
Nature Walk Idea (Head): When I worked for a wildlife education non-profit a for five years I visited many schools and even adult groups to help teach the community about wildlife identification and conservation. The most surprising part of many of these mini-seminars was that the majority of the children and adults could not identify some of the most basic plants and animals in our region. Many people would call Oak Trees, “acorn trees” and could not tell the difference between a cougar and a bobcat, even though our state has a population of over 12,000 bobcats. The first step to being aware of the natural world and being part of a positive change is being able to identify some of the animals and plants around you. Choose four mammals, four birds and four trees from your region/state today and make sure you can identify at least those four basic forms of wildlife in your area. If you want to start a wildlife identification book you can even do that and add to it each week. If you choose to do that I recommend learning only one new species every two weeks. For Iowa we chose the trees of: Oak, Maple, Pine and Elm. We chose the animals: Bobcat, Fox, Groundhog and Mink. We chose the birds: Bard Owl, Eagle, Hawk and Finch.
To delve deeper into wildlife education choose from some of our amazing wildlife education blocks HERE.
Photography Notes (Hands): Today we are going to do one last assignment with aperture before we move on to combining the idea of aperture with other concepts like ISO. Today your assignment is to photograph everything in black and white. If your camera does not have a black and white setting then imagine that everything you are photographing is in black and white and change all the images to black and white using a simple editing program after you download them (every editing program has this option). In observing the black and white photos you will be able to see that photography is more than just settings and buttons and names like aperture and ISO. Photography is all about light. Sometimes we get distracted with all the colors and buttons and we forget about the light. But light is what photography was originally built on and is also what photography continues to rely on. Observing and evaluating your black and white photos is an effective way to really see what aperture is doing to the light in your photos. If your aperture is too wide your photos may be washed out and details in the shadows will not be clear. If your aperture is set too small your photos will be too dark. Even with editing in a photo editing program these issues are often still apparent.
Verse: Cats Are All Alike
Copyright Kristie Burns
Cougar
Pouncing, Crouching
Defined by stalking
Concealing, relishes stunning its prey
House-cat
Two years ago I worked closely and daily with a cougar from birth to age two. During this time I learned that cougars and house-cats have the exact same habits. The only difference is that a cougar is 100 pounds and much larger. So if you want to know what it would be like to work with a cougar imagine your house-cat as big as a dog that weighs 100-120 pounds. Then you can start to see how dangerous they can really be to mice and other creatures even though we see cats as so sweet and docile.
*A Cinquain has five lines. The first line is the title word (noun), the second line is a two word description, the third line is three words of action, the fourth line is four words of feeling and the fifth line is one word (noun) that is a synonym for the title.
*These poems have been created for many purposes – from early childhood circle time verses to inspirational or expressive. They vary from day to day so you may find the way you use them or enjoy them also varies. If you would like to set these poems to music consider our tutorial: Creating Your Ow Waldorf Verses or Finding Your Inner Voice.
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What is #Earthschooling365?
This series takes you through an entire year of our nature walks and is part of our non-profit project #Earthschooling365 at www.Earthschooling.org. The photos and posts in this series are all copyrighted. Please do not share or re-print them. Instead, share the link to this blog with your friends.
Along the way I will be sharing our favorite photo of the day, an inner work meditation for the day, photography assignment/tip for the day, nature walk theme for the day and a short verse for circle time (children) or meditation (teens/adults). We invite you to “walk along with us” this year, take some time to use the inner work meditation, be inspired by the nature walk theme of the day and perhaps even start a photo series of your own. To join the community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram please tag your photos #Earthschooling365. To receive these inspirations in your e-mail inbox daily please subscribe to our blog alerts HERE. Don’t worry about missing days – you can join us as many days as you want this year!
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