5 days 5 walks

I began my series of walks related to the elements given, and walked to/from a different location each day from my house.

 

Day 1:

Earth

Time: 6pm 24th Aug

Location: Sand deposits (maybe for landfill), Bedok Reservoir area

Non-human life forms: Quite a lot of millipedes. One rhino beetle.

Primarily decomposers? I don’t see much else.

Walk duration: 1hr 15 mins. Distance: 5.9km

Day 2:

Wood

Time: 10pm 25th Aug

Location: Neighbourhood parks, Chai Chee area.

Non-human life forms:

Plants: Cannonball, durian, rambutan, mango, frangipani, rain tree, coconut palm.

Animals: Centipede, snail, unknown beetle, fruit bat, stray cats, squirrel, rats

Large amount of primary and secondary consumers, some scavengers and decomposers.

Duration: 45 mins. Approx 1-2km in distance.

Rough map of the area near my place, and the two parks mentioned above.

There used to be a pack of civet cats that nested at my neighbour’s rooftop and along some pipes, but they haven’t been sighted in a month or so. There’s also a white cockatoo (probably escaped) that roosts nearby. Fruit bats are aplenty, and when lucky, one can hear hoots from owls at the factory area. The owl(s) do not appear often; the last time i have seen one personally was almost 1 year ago.

Day 3:

Water

Time: 7am 26th Aug

Location: East Coast park

Non-human life forms: Sea apple, coconut palm, mudskipper, unknown fish, stray cats, ants, earthworm, crab, sandflies, crows, heron(?)

Spotted a heron in a nearby storm drain leading to the sea.

Quite an amount of decomposers, probably due to the waves at the shore bringing in lots of dead stuff.

Duration: 3 hours. Approx 12-15km.

Day 4:

Metal

Time: 2pm 27th Aug

Location: Bedok Industrial park

Non-human life forms: random plants, rain tree, single mango tree, crows, mynahs, blue-ish kingfisher, green parrot, noisy yellow bird

Lots of flying creatures and lack of other animals, probably due to the heavily built up area. Really dusty as well. No idea why the kingfisher was there as there were no ready source of fish in the area.

Duration: 1hr 10mins. Approx 3-4km.

Day 5:

Fire

Time: 3pm 28th Aug

Location: Disused area, probably left over when the original building was razed. Near Eunos.

Non-human life forms: various type of grasses. eagle(?) flying overhead. some lizards, random insects.

Not surprised to see an assortment of life forms in this area. Though it is particularly dry. No birds in the area apart from the eagle.

Duration: 45 mins. Approx 2km.

My chosen element is fire, mainly because of how it can create life and destroy life. Some plants require heat or fire to spread their seeds, or resist fire. Specifically the Cistus species, which can tolerate hardy conditions and heat. In a paper written by James Olsen in the 1960s, it is stated that the plants could have emitted chemicals or oils that could cause it to self immolate in the proper circumstance.

Fire, in another sense also represents the sun, which is necessary to create and support life via photosynthesis subsequent consumption and transfer of energy of the producers to the primary consumers, and so forth.