#Earthschooling365: Day Sixty-Six
Inner Work Meditation (Heart): Today I had a really hard time taking a photo I liked of a pile of mushrooms I saw. One would think it would not be such a big deal. However, I was really charmed by this little mushroom village and I really wanted to capture it on film. I just wanted to include everything in the photo but the charm of the little mushroom village didn’t really come out until I cut some things out of the photo. Who would have imagined that cutting something out of the photo would communicate more than including the entire scene? Do you ever find yourself doing that in your daily life? Sometimes we try to include so much in a conversation, in a day, in a lesson, in an outing, or in anything we are doing – that we overwhelm our senses (and/or those of others) and end up missing out on why we wanted the conversion, lesson, or outing in the first place. Meditate today on something you can cut out of your schedule, lesson or outing today that will make it better. Continue to focus on this theme all day in your conversations as well.
Nature Walk Idea (Head): Today’s nature walk assignment is to count and record various things on your walk. This is one of the jobs of the scientist. Today you can be a citizen scientist. Having data about plants, animals, and insects is how scientists learn more about nature. Choose one or more things today and count them. Then, the rest of the week continue to count them each day until you have a week’s worth of data. Alternately, you can count them during seven different days that are not sequential. For example – if you see a patch of mushrooms like this – how many mushrooms are there? Do they multiply over the week or month? How many are there after a week? After a month? What does this data tell you?
Photography Notes (Hands): When I was working as a journalist the editors always demanded “tight” writing. This means that they didn’t want any extra words in the article. They wanted everything to be focused, specific and efficient. As you can tell from my lengthy blog posts that isn’t always my favorite thing to do while writing. However, it does make for a better final product – for example, if I was going to publish the blog as a book. This is also something that always needs to be practiced. The same thing is true in photography. Some of the best photos are “tight” – they tell the story efficiently, focus on the subject, and cut out the extra. However, this is not always easy. For example, in the case of this photo of the mushrooms I loved the texture on the tree so much and the way the mushrooms made a little village at the foot of the tree. However, the photo really has too much going on in it and not enough focus on the subject. Zooming in on the structure of the mushroom village itself created a much better photo. The same thing happened in the second photo of the large fungi. Rather than take a photo of the entire half-circle fungi I cut the frame to bring more focus into the center of the structure and the abstract of the green leaf that had fallen on it. Today your assignment is to “zoom in” and “cut out” the extra in your photos.
Verse: The Village
Copyright Kristie Burns
A Riddle Poem
A magical little town
Appears each time it rains
Under the oak tree brown
It has no streets, nor garden lanes.
Only the soft ridged roofs appear
Overlapping in a neighborly manner
Until the skies become too clear
Beams start to crumble under each manor
What am I?
*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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