It is entirely possible to wander blindly through life and see or learn almost nothing of true value. I have taken whole classes through walks and woods teaming with learning opportunities and had them tell me they had learned nothing. So, we to learn to evoke our inner Sherlock.
Look at something. Anything that strikes your fancy. The seaweed washed up around the hauled up tugboat. Wait, that’s not the same seaweed I mulched my garden with in June. It’s sea grass. The sea bottom here must be different than the south end of the harbor. Mental note to come back with buckets, and to remember it for next year’s garden.
Sand, so much fine sand around the boat. They must have sand blasted. Sand is good for garden soil, but not mixed with the chemicals of boat paint. The hull can’t be wood if they sand blasted. No, it’s steel. Not in great shape. It can’t belong to the yard whose name it carries. They maintain their boats better than that. I’ll bet they sold it to the Vietnamese men who were working on it.
I can hear my roommate coming home from work. He didn’t have a good day. His posture is melting and he can barely pick up his feet.
There are no bird calls on the air. All I hear is the buzzing of grasshoppers. They have entirely different mating cycles. But the air is filled with fledgling seagulls and osprey. Most of them won’t live through the winter. It truly is the survival of the fittest on the coast. OK, sometimes it’s survival of the luckiest. Bad storms or mild winters tip the scales.
Sometimes my inner Sherlock tweaks me to research something I have seen. Sometimes it encourages me to act. Mostly, though, I go home and carry on with my day. I don’t want to be so hyper-vigilant all the time. My mind needs time to rest and process. But I learned a few interesting things today that will serve me. All I needed to do was observe and think.
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