Optional Activity: Observe Your Site with Your Sit Spot
As time allow, try out this Sit Spot Activity, which may be helpful with your Site Assessment exercises in Modules 1 & 2.
Sit spot is a technique that is both simple and complex. It is a very effective way to begin to know your landscape because it encourages prolonged, thoughtful observation of one place in the natural world with you, the observer, continually asking questions, noticing patterns, and seeking information to apply to your garden design.The purpose of your sit spot is ultimately to improve and deepen your understanding of natural systems by devoting yourself to consistent time in them. Seeing the same spot at different times of day and during different seasons allows you to see the dynamics of nature unfold. We spend much of our time learning about things in this course, but this is a chance to spend time IN your landscape, IN your garden, learning directly from it.
From Wilderness Awareness teacher Jon Young:
Find one place you can get to know really, really well. This is the most important routine you can develop. Know it by day; know it by night; know it in the rain and in the snow, in the depth of winter and in the heat of summer. Know the stars and where the four directions are there; know the birds that live there, know the trees they live in. Get to know these things as if they were your relatives, for, in time, you will come to know that they are. That is the most important thing you can do in order to excel at any skill in nature.
Nature and your own heart are the best teachers, but your body, mind and spirit all have to attend the class, and do the homework. There is no replacement for this experience!
From Kamana 1: Exploring Natural Mystery by Jon Young, page 98.
Link to Sit Spot Activity here