TUESDAY OCTOBER 2, 2001: MY OLD LIVE JOURNAL
Posted: October 2, 2001 Filed under: Beginnings, Being a Naturalist Leave a comment »When I discovered an old Live Journal, which includes 8 entries I made from October 2, 2001 to April 27, 2002, I decided to include the first two entries here because they seem related to the thoughts I began recording in my HOMEWORK FOR A VISION blog on August 25, 2003 :
OCTOBER 2, 2001: THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE
I spent yesterday and today liquidating almost 40 years worth of handwritten journals. I’ve decided I’d rather keep a public, online journal that does not take up space, accumulate dust, and threaten to embarrass me when I die. The journals I liquidated were personal journals, the background writing that supported a lifetime of teaching English and writing newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books. I think I want my online journal to be a continuation of the small pocket notebooks I’ve carried with me on walks for the past 25 years. I did not liquidate these small notebooks because they include dated observations of the natural world, which is all that really seems important to me at this point in my life. (SEE MY NATURALIST’S JOURNAL)
BACKWARD AND THEN FORWARD
I began this Live Journal today, but I wanted to back up and say that I took a long walk on September 30 to think about my life. I saw a HERMIT THRUSH down by the Nature Center’s Lookout. An omen? I consider HERMIT THRUSHES special because they are so silent it’s like seeing a ghost or a shadow that then materializes into a bird. When I see one I feel like the kind of naturalist I want to be: alert, attentive, clear-eyed, and able to identify what I see. When I came home from recycling my old handwritten journals, I took another walk to think about what I had done. I saw another HERMIT THRUSH up by my Thinking Bench. Again it was dead silent, hardly moving in the shadowy woodland light, but I saw it and knew what it was. So maybe I’m back to becoming a naturalist after long years of distraction?
