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Seeing

© James E. Ratzloff

Naturalist and writer John Burroughs was a passionate observer. He said that "there is nothing in which people differ more than in the powers of observation - some are only half alive to what is going on around them. Others again are keenly alive. . . . They see and hear everything, whether it directly concerns them or not. Their powers of observation suggest the sight and scent of wild animals.

I seem to be closer to the more half-alive type of person, part of the time anyway - some things I see, many things I miss. I recently came across a person who's seeing is more in the keenly alive group. It was a week ago Saturday, and the person was a Dad of one of the schoolchildren on the nature walk I was leading, at Barr Lake State Park.

I had stopped along the trail, and threw off my backpack, intending to tell the children a story about insects or foxes, using my pictures and stuffed animals as props. Just as I did, the Dad said 'sssshhhhh, look over there, under that tree.' No more than thirty feet away, in the shade of a cottonwood, sitting in the tall grass, were five mule deer. The shade and the camoflauge of the grass made them nearly invisible to almost all of us, except the one. I am sure I never would have seen them. Wild animals know that to remain still gives them protection. And these were using that fact to their advantage. Once we all looked at them, and they knew their cover was broken, then stood up and walked to the willows, to the shade of a tall cottonwood grove.

A keen observer not only pays attention to animals moving through the landscape, but the changes in the landscape itself. And that brings me to the story of the second time my crude observation skills were revealed to me, a week ago Saturday. The same Dad who spotted the deer, asked me how long this Cottonwood has been down, when we got back to the trailhead. I looked, and a massive tree that had been in soil wetted by the high lake levels had toppled over since my last trip. It still had green leaves along its length - the ones down near the ground on the branches crushed by the fall were just starting to yellow. I had passed by that spot three times that Saturday morning, and did not notice the down tree until this man had mentioned it.

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