2022-05-04
Early in May, I took a brief walk at Victoria M. Ela Avenue inside the UPLB campus. I started walking out of the house around 5 pm, so the sun was no longer shining bright. I had to go home by 7 pm for dinner, so I only had two hopefully good hours to walk. At Ela, I stopped at the bridge and looked down at the Molawin creek. On the stream, I saw two birds cross the water towards the other bank full of stones. They looked like bush hens with long slender feet. They separated for a while in a very coordinated manner, as if identical birds were walking in separate directions or raptors hunting in sync. A few moments later, the two birds met again. They walked some more until they vanished under the shades of banana leaves. When they disappeared, the church bell nearby rang, and a teal kingfisher flew by.
I wrote all of these in my field notes. But not long after this, it started to get dark, and I began to feel tired. I walked a bit at Freedom Park, then made my way home. While walking home, I couldn’t shake off what I had just seen, and that was when I realized I walked for about two hours but only witnessed a single of these moments worth writing. I only found a single piece of Dillard’s pennies.
I went home that evening with a clear intention, brought by the feedback I received while actively doing something. From now on, I decided to extend my walking hours. I reasoned that if I could capture a single penny in two hours, I might catch another or more in four hours of walking. A few days after this, I did another walk, but now I started about an hour earlier, and boy was I rewarded with pennies at that walk!