Building Sensory Awareness Skills and a Visit to Catfish Pond

by Shanna Lea

This week I worked on a new journal and then went out to Catfish Pond for a walk with my son and his dog LadyBug. 

There is new growth everywhere. Everything is GREEN. Growing up in the Texas Panhandle, everything is brown from August to March and here in North Carolina, it’s green almost year-round. 

Catfish Pond is a local pond that only a few people go to and this weekend there was one fisherman there on the opposite bank. The soft spongy grass was a carpet of green mixed with the tiniest yellow flowers. 

I took pictures and plan to upload them to iNaturalist to get an identification on them. This is a new app I discovered and am learning how to use it. There are so many different plants and trees for me to learn while I’m here and I want to nature journal all of it.

I’m told the pine pollen will be upon us soon, and having never experienced it before, I am looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about. I saw a video about using pine pollen to make cakes and thought that looked interesting. I did not know pine pollen was used for food. 

Here is the video if you are interested:

Pine Tree Flower Cake – Little Square Cake on the Streets of Ancient Towns.

Building Sensory Awareness Skills

While I was out at Catfish Pond, I took time to feel the breeze and sun on my face, smell the air and pick out pond smell from grass, from pine and any other smells I could pick up on. LadyBug kept putting her nose to the ground and inhaling scents only dogs can love and pulling ahead of me. (Isn’t she a pretty dog? I used her picture on a dog walking journal.)

Every moment I brought my awareness back to where I was and asked myself questions:

What do you see around you where you are at right now?

What do you hear?

Is there a smell?

What do you taste? Can you taste the air?

What is touching your skin? Is there a breeze on your skin? What is the texture of your clothes? 

For the last several weeks, my best friend and I played this game, dedicating one week to each sense to build our sensory awareness skills of our surroundings. She works in an office building and I work from home and we live several states apart. So, we have different environments to work with. 

Every day we reported back to each other what we discovered. We picked up on different subjects for each sense and always sensed more than what we thought we would by the end of the day. Each day, we focused more attention to that sense and connected to our surroundings on a deeper level. 

She paid attention to the goings-on of her office building to things she normally tuned out. And I focused on nature sounds outside my window. She picked up on the hum of office machines and AC units and co-worker’s conversations, the smells and tastes of coffee and foods and cologne (yes, she could taste the cologne on the air—Ewww). 

I focused in on bird calls outside, and spying the first robins and hearing the caw of crows in the forest down the street. The smell of rain on the wind as new storms pushed through overnight and the smell of pine in the air afterward. Some of my favorite things are paper, pens, and jeans and I focused on the feeling the texture of each as I worked at my desk. While walking at the pond, I noted the smoothness of the Ladybug’s fur, the downy softness of Spanish Moss, and the warmth of the sun on my cheeks. 

At the end of the five weeks, we spent another week putting it all together, bringing our full awareness to all our senses, gathering information about our surroundings daily.

What are the benefits of building sensory awareness skills? Every area of your life can benefit from being mindful and aware of your surroundings through your five senses. Listening to bird calls lets you know if there is any danger in your neighborhood. Watching with wide-angle vision, like an owl, helps you see a big picture of what is going on around you while you load groceries in the car. Keeping alert through smell lets you know if there is smoke in the air or that spring is in the air and it’s time to start that garden. 

While we played this game, I created a new book, 5 Senses Journal–Build Awareness Skills of Your Surroundings. This journal has a week by week set of pages for you to fill in all the things you notice through each sense and then wrap it up at the end by engaging all your senses. 

There’s also a sketch page for each day so you can draw what you sense. I learned through nature journaling that sketching deepens your connection to your surroundings, even if you don’t think you can draw very well. Look for my announcement of when the 5 Senses Journal will be published. You can find it here.

Stay connected to Nature!

Shanna

Happenings:

My colleague, Denis Ledoux, is relaunching his Write Your First Draft Memoir Program for anyone interested in writing their life stories. I’ve been through the course and it will help you plan and write that first draft. That is the most important part of writing that everyone has the hardest time with, getting started. The first draft of anything, a book, an article, a blog post, etc., is always messy. I actually love the first draft. I get to pour everything out of my head onto paper like dumping a box full of mementos that have been packed up for years, onto the bed and sifting through which ones I want to keep and re-membering other memories that were meaningful to me. Be sure and check out the program.

If you want to just dip your toes in and see if memoir writing is for you, Denis has also launched the free memoir course, Start to Write Your Memoir. Denis is a compassionate coach and will help you get your book on the right path.

What I’m Reading:

This week I’m reading short creative nonfiction pieces from Creative Nonfiction Magazine and Brevity Magazine. I’m very interested in learning how to write these short essays and learning from other writers. 

I read sporadically and read several books at a time. I’ll be reading one for a day or two, and then start another and then come back to the first one and then move on to something else. I used to read one book at a time and finish, but I think midlife has taught me to take in the moment what is relevant instead of trying to “finish the whole thing”.  So now I dabble in different genres because I have so many interests.

Cabinet of Curiosities by Gordon Grice is sitting beside my chair and I look at it in small moments. I love the cover of all the little curiosities he found along the way put in a small sectioned cabinet. The book is broken down into the classifications for animals, plants, and minerals and is just fun to look through.

I’ve finished The Curious Naturalist by Sy Montgomery a few weeks ago and absolutely loved this book of short nature essays that were packed with wit, humor, and information. I’m on her other book now, The Wild Out Your Window and am loving it, and have her The Soul of an Octopus and The Voice of the Infinite in the Small by Joanne Elizabeth Lauck both sitting on the table for me to start next. 

This year I’ve become interested in insects and appreciating the complexity and interesting lives these small beings lead.  I have been watching a (new to me) bug called Mosquito Hawk. (It’s actually called a Crane Fly, but it looks like a huge mosquito). They keep coming into the house (they are harmless) and live out their short adulthood (just a few days!) in here. They spend most of their life as larvae in damp places or ponds. 

They love to come into the house, flutter around in the bathrooms against the mirrors or behind the shades against the windows. I found a dead one and placed it under the handheld microscope I picked up recently and was amazed at the beauty of the Mosquito Hawk’s wings and body. It was a shimmery gold similar to that of a minnow. The feathery hairs on the edges of the wings and legs were so delicate and detailed. I love looking at the details of such small things and find it all fascinating and now I want this mini microscope to hook up to my iPhone.

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