Site #1
\nThe Shape of the Land
\nAt 3:00PM September 24th 2009 I again surveyed the Stetson Woods Parking lot.\u00a0 I\u2019m here to see how much has changed, and to get a better sense of the terrain here.\u00a0 The first change I noticed was that the weather was nicer than last week, with a light breeze and temperatures around 70 degrees.\u00a0 The clouds were at places wispy and sometimes fluffy but left open vast patches of blue in the sky.\u00a0 The animals in the area seemed to agree that this was a nicer time to be out since I was greeted by two squirrels at the northeastern corner of the woods.
\nThis was not the only change, however; on the northern side a maple tree had begun to turn red and defoliate.\u00a0 The branches hung over the parking lot and so covered both the dirt in the woods and asphalt of the parking with brilliant yellow-red leaves.\u00a0 Giving a quick survey of the outer edges of the woods before I went in, I noticed that all of the plants in the woods appeared to be less lush than I\u2019d seen in the previous week and visibility through the woods was easier than before.\u00a0 As I entered, I got caught on a small thorn bush, not remembering sighting one my last trip.\u00a0 I was glad that there was still no poison ivy.
\nBut not everything had changed, as mosquitoes still managed to get me itching about 5 minutes after walking into the center of the woods.\u00a0 The central depression in the woods still appeared to be quite hospitable to them.\u00a0 The shape of the forest had not changed either; it was still a rough rectangle with the chapel facing (Southwest) edge descending quickly about 25 feet to a depression in the middle of the site from which the ground ascends slightly to the northeastern corner.\u00a0 I imagined the general shaped to be that of a bowl missing some of its walls.
\nUsing my front bicycle tire as a trundle wheel I walked my bike around the enclosed wooded area to test out my bowl idea.\u00a0 After measuring out each of the sides, my previous estimate of the area as \u00bc appears to be just right.\u00a0 The north curb is 105 feet long, the northwest is 125, the southwest is 175 and the East is 140 (see map).\u00a0 When looking at the map, however, the distances may not match up exactly with proper proportions because of the nature of the sloping terrain.\u00a0 In paying closer attention to corners of the curbs which dictate the shape of the site I realized that my \u201cbowl\u201d had four definite corners and had unfortunately been damaged beyond appearing like any serving dish.\u00a0 As a result, I drew an elevation map which should do a better job of describing what I cannot.
\nFrom the center of the southwestern edge, there is a break in the trees with a series of large dark colored rocks that serve as steps (but are clearly not man-made) down to the center of the woods.\u00a0 Looking up from any near central position gives you an obscured view of the sky.\u00a0 Occasionally it is small trees that block out the blue sky ten feet above your head, and sometimes it is the large trees growing towards the outer edges of the site that seriously obstruct the majority of the view.\u00a0 The trees positioned on the highest edge by the Thompson Memorial Chapel always had some of their wide reaching branches in view.
\nAside from the early leaves turning on one of the maples at my site and the slightly less coy animal life, little had changed but my own perception.\u00a0 I now saw thorns and shape like I hadn\u2019t before.\u00a0 The terrain had not changed and the plants had changed little.\u00a0 I realize now, all that had changed in the past week was the shape of my ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Site #1 The Shape of the Land At 3:00PM September 24th 2009 I again surveyed the Stetson Woods Parking lot.\u00a0 I\u2019m here to see how much has changed, and to get a better sense of the terrain here.\u00a0 The first change I noticed was that the weather was nicer than last week, with a light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12614],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-stetson-hall-parking-lot-woods"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/biol225\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}