Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with something I’ve been thinking about for a while – this whole idea of the “gray zone” when a tree falls. You know, like, if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around, does it make a sound? But I wanted to actually see it, kind of.
First, I grabbed my old camera. It’s nothing fancy, just a point-and-shoot, but it has a timer function, which is what I needed. I also dug out my ancient tripod from the back of the closet. It was dusty as heck, but it still worked.
Setting Up the Experiment
I headed out to the woods behind my house. There’s this one area with a bunch of, well, not dead trees, but definitely leaning trees. I picked one that looked like it was ready to go at any moment – seriously, I barely touched it and it wobbled.
Then, I set up the tripod a safe distance away. I mean, I’m not trying to get squashed by a tree for a blog post. I fiddled with the camera settings, put it on timer mode, and hit the button.
- Checked the camera angle – didn’t want to just film the sky.
- Made sure the timer was set for long enough – I gave myself a good 10 minutes.
- Double-checked everything because, you know, Murphy’s Law.
The Waiting Game…and the Fall!
And then…I waited. And waited. It was actually kind of boring. I ended up sitting on a nearby rock, swatting at mosquitoes and wondering if I was wasting my time.
I do not know what I was thinking, or what I was expecting.
I walked back to the camera, picked it up, and looked at the screen. Yep, there it was – a blurry, shaky video of a tree falling * sound on the recording, of course, because it’s just a cheap camera.
So, did I prove anything? Not really. Did I have fun? Kind of. It was definitely a different way to spend an afternoon. And hey, at least I got a blog post out of it, right?
