One of the things I am learning from this project is the importance of wandering through this landscape I have been looking at so often with what I call soft eyes. It’s a way for me to quiet my mind and listen to what the landscape wants to share with me. Because we have our Chronosequence work and responding to new typologies as they occur it is easy to work with an objective. Soft eyes the value of the objective approach while setting it aside at times.

In the early morning on July 1, 2022 I was wandering around Finn Rock Reach. My soft eyes landed on flowers again and again. By lunch time I had photographed 39 different flowers at both of our project sites.

We will get the flowers identified and divided into natives and invasive species. We plan to photograph each year on July first to begin a data set as well as a fond appreciation of the fertile flowers of these resilient forests.