Wednesday Walk - The Tale of a Curious Calf and a Fungi Hunt
This morning was one of those odd days where I woke up on the wrong side of bed and I had very little drive to do anything.
Couldn't even be bothered to take a look at hive and read a few posts from my favorite writers on here. I just about managed to follow my daily ritual of morning yoga.
This lack of motivation was a quandary - something I know everyone gets sometimes - but that always causes me dread as I've suffered depression in the past, and this is how it manifests; with apathy.
Then it hit me, the best remedy for these types of feelings is getting out in nature, somewhere with trees where you can feel the sun on your face and get a breath of fresh air.
After a small breakfast, I drove to a place called Croxteth park which I have written about on hive before. It was a crisp winter day with that clear, dazzling sunlight that you get in the Northern hemisphere.
Walking down the long road from West Derby Village which leads to Croxteth Hall, ancestral stately home of the Molyneux family, I was amazed by the late colour in the leaves on the trees.
To me this is very strange, as I have existed for more than 40 years on this planet and lived in the same city all my life, and the leaves have always fallen by mid November up until the last few years. At this time in November, for most of my life I have been very aware that all the trees are bare of leaves.
Climate deniers beware...
To me, this phenomenon is bitter sweet - because the cavalcade of colour in the autumn shift of leaves is one of the most magnificent natural displays in the UK - as however much I may enjoy wandering the autumnal dreamscape for an extra 4-6 weeks, this is one of several physical expressions by nature that I've seen over the last ten years that prove that our climate is dramatically changing.
The falling leaves is also one of the primary processes of nature by which the earth is fertilized, specifically in the northern and central hemispheres of this planet. Any change in when, why or how, the autumn leaf fall happens, is a very serious indicator of potential catastrophe!
Anyway, moving swiftly on 😂
Wandering on down the path toward Croxteth Hall I noticed a small herd of cattle ⬆️ that had been corralled into a fenced off area. My girlfriend wasn't up for the idea of crossing the slightly muddy verges to lean on the fence and check out our bovine friends.
As you can see in the picture the calf was very curious about me, possibly because I was offering up a handful of grass from the verges outside the corral. But the mother cow kept mooing in an intense manner, and the calf wouldn't approach any further. I'm guessing it was only a week or two old, as the mother seemed overly protective to me given the amount of human foot traffic that passes them daily.
I left my calf friend alone and carried on until we reached the stately home of Croxteth Hall ⬆️ As we passed under the trees pictured above the wind sent golden leaves spinning down around us which brought a smile to both our faces.
As we walked back to the carpark clouds had started to gather and I snapped a quick picture of the woodland canopy before it became rapidly grey.
We jumped in the car, and although the weather had become cloudy there was no rain, so we decided to stop at another park which was on the way back home.
After capturing that somewhat fuzzy image of fungus as we left Croxteth Park, I was determined to seek out a better mycelium to feature as my photographic model 🍄
We said hello to the local ducks, who seemed a bit pissed that we had no bread or other food for them and then we wandered on, as I kept a keen eye out for any mushrooms.
The park was full of dog walkers, and we found it difficult not to PMSL laughing at the many varied pooch jackets that were being sported by the local canine population. Seriously, it was like a dog fashion show as this park is a reasonably affluent area of the city. They were too fast for me to get any pictures of, despite trying, but the highlight was cockapoo with an illuminous orange jacket which was prancing about with its tail in the air, everything toasty and warm, covered up, apart from its arse 😂
Eventually, we realized we'd have to leave the path and meandered into some of the more wooded areas of the park... but nothing. Not a mushroom to be seen... until
This small cluster of mushrooms, probably my favorite picture from the whole walk, were sitting right by the base of a tree, just off the path to the carpark we had passed an hour ago.
Despite my best attempt to identify these pretty speckled white mushrooms using an AI picture fungus identification tool after 4 attempts, and checking 12 different suggestions using Google, that were completely wrong, I gave up.
It seems I've found another thing AI still can't do as well as humans, although I'm aware that you have to be highly trained to safely identify edible mushrooms, so perhaps AI will catch up eventually.
Thanks for joining me on my Wednesday walk 🙂🌿
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Hmm AI can't write poetry as well as humans as yet as it is not fully sentient, but I dread the day. Love those autumn pictures. Those golden leaves spiraling down has inspired me a lot, I guess I have pictured them somewhere in one of my poems and majorly in one of my short stories.
Hi @sofs-su
Firstly, thanks for the compliment on the pictures and the falling leaves. I'm guessing you listened to the YouTube performance.
I agree that I dread the day, but I don't personally think it will happen as quickly as some people think as AI is extremely effective at mining the internet for knowledge and putting together arguments/articles/commentary around a subject using purely logical intelligence, but it doesn't yet understand the nuance of creative intelligence... at least not IMO based on my research and experimentation.
I've actually researched and written extensively (in a few mainstream publications) about AI content creation limitations. Strangely enough, poetry is something that AI doesn't do well, especially if you're comparing what the AI produced to a professional human poets standard.
There are so few 'professional' poets in this world, and some would argue that it is an antiquated writing niche, but there are poets who make their living from being unique and skilled writers (although they very often have to supplement their income by teaching creative writing classes, or lecturing in universities). My favorite male poet - and current UK poet laureate - Simon Armitage is a good example of a modern day professional poet.
Anyway, to elaborate on my point, I was at a poetry night I read at last month (check out the YouTube recording of one of my headline sets at the bottom of this post if you're interested) and a fellow poet was making the argument that AI poetry writing algorithms could help poets produce more, and better, work 😂
So as I was performing near to the end of the set, I decided to do a little experiment, as I disagreed with him and wanted to prove his premise wrong. Not to belittle him, but out of genuine worry that some people might fail to develop their own unique writers' voice/style if they started using AI extensively to try and capture the essence of poetic expression.
I put into a poetry AI website the a prompt describing the premise of my poem, Dionisius Sojourn:
Dionisius Sojourn is a poem which employs various free-verse poetic techniques such as in-line rhymes, alliteration, assonance and experimentation with language that AI simply doesn't understand how to achieve well. It might sound a bit arrogant, but it's true. At this point AI poetry generators basically reference a massive catalogue of poetry they find on the internet and take random techniques, or styles, from the dataset trying to combine them with a loose narrative that fits the prompt you give them.
I put this prompt into an AI poetry generator website:
I'm not going to put the whole poem up here, but here is part of it to exemplify my point.
The sections I've put in bold and italics both show archaic language that has no place in contemporary poetry as it has evolved. It wasn't a terrible poem, it just lacked inventiveness, style and some of the more nuanced poetic techniques such as those I mentioned above (alliteration, assonance etc).
When it came to my set I started off by stating outright that AI in its current form couldn't replace human craft in writing poetry, at best it can create a template that perhaps could help writers suffering from creative block. I then read out my poem Dionisius Sojourn followed by a completely unedited version of what the AI generator had come up with. The second poem was greeted with laughter by an audience of people (as they usually are at poetry nights) who were either poets themselves, people who worked as writers in some capacity, or poetry enthusiasts.
Lol, sorry for the length of this comment, but it is something I do feel quite strongly about having completed a creative writing degree and subsequently built a career as a writer.
AI writing sites, as they are now, can create perfectly serviceable web copy... but I've yet to see any AI writing software that can recreate that spark of unique creativity that good fiction or poetry writers exhibit in their work.
It is an interesting subject for sure. And there are undoubtedly some people on hive trying to game the system with AI poetry writing websites, and also ChatGPT and other AI content generators. But IMO, these people are fighting a loosing battle, and that battle is the fight to further their own self-development and ability as a writer 😂
Thanks for your comment sofs-su, and for checking out my post 👍
P.s. here is my YouTube headline poetry set I mentioned. It isn't the one where I did the experiment with AI as I didn't have the equipment to film that one, but it's worth a watch if you like poetry performances.
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such beautiful photos
I think we all have those days now and again where our motivation seems to be hiding away
As for climate change I am with you if people just open there eyes and look at the changing weather patterns it is impossible to deny that we for sure have changed the patterns and need to do something now before its to late
Thanks for joining the Wednesday Walk :)
Hi tattoodjay
Yeah, it is all about finding ways to drag myself out of that mood. Luckily for me, a walk somewhere with a bit of nature, even just one of the bigger parks in the city where you can't hear the traffic, always snaps me out of it.
Lol, it was a happy coincidence that it was a Wednesday and I remembered about this great community when I arrived back from dropping my girlfriend at her place, feeling better and with some time on my hands 😀
Yeah, that is a mirror of my thoughts on that subject for sure 👍
Thanks for checking out my post.
yeah walks do that for me as well, with age i feel the cold more so I get less walks in winter and that make sit a challenge to keep my mood up
Yay! 🤗
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