The place I decided to visit is a manmade pond at a local VFW building. When you walk up to the pond and take a look around, you notice that all of the shores of the pond that are in front of you are either surrounded by trees, or houses. During the latter part of the evening (I was there at about 8:45), you can see the stars reflecting off of the surface of the pond. This reflection on the surface made me want to look up into space.
As I look up into space, the trees and houses in my peripheral vision create the illusion of a portal, almost like looking through a big lensed telescope. The “tunnel vision” that was created directed my eyes to a perfectly focused location where I was able to see hundreds of stars, one just as clear as the other. As I look at these stars, I realize that they are galaxies just like this, with planets just like this.
As I look back down from the sky and glance over the surface of the pond, I was able to notice some movement in the tree line ahead and in on the surface of the water. Those two things made me transition away my primary focus from my eyes, to my ears. As I scan the water and peek into the wood line at the same time, I’m listening very closely for any type of sound. All of a sudden I notice another movement in the water. At this time, I turn my head, and heard a loud drop, as some sort of fish breached the water.
After that encounter, I settled down and calmed my nerves. I must have missed whatever it was out in the tree line. At that moment, I realized that when I’m in an unfamiliar environment, I should not just focus on one particular sense. Basically, I shouldn’t daydream. Whatever was in those woods may have been a serious threat had I been in a similar situation in a different environment. For example, what if I was on vacation in Alaska on the shore of a lake and stared off into space like that? In that environment, I could’ve been attacked by a bear.