If a tree falls in the forest and no one Twitters about it, does it really happen?

I had a lovely day today. I went to Healesville with my work compadre Margaret, and we wandered about near the rainforest-y Badger Creek and Badger Weir before retiring to Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander for food-sweet-food. I did intend to take Housemate Andrew's digital camera, but was disorganised about the whole thing and forgot to ask him last night if he could leave it out. It's a pity I didn't get the opportunity to snap Margaret wearing a yellow rain poncho, posing touristically and awkwardly inside a hollow tree (that would have made me chuckle no end), but I wasn't too troubled about it. I have always maintained that tis better to have your head and eyes and nose and ears right in the moment, observing the leaf litter and the strange fungi and the lichen that grows beard-like on tree ferns, rather than be stuck behind a camera recording the hell out of the moment you just missed. 

So many people live like this these days, in a state of recording and documenting rather than experiencing (says me, with my blog and my facebook et cetera). After a particularly ill-fated and misguided excursion to the yoof full Fashion Keyboard about two years ago, I coined the term `digital tourettes' to refer to the youngsters seeming lack of control over their perpetually flashing digicams. 

But as I have just this week stepped out onto the edge of the slippery Twitter slope, it did amuse me to imagine tweeting from the middle of the forest.

`Just saw most amazing tree ever #amazingtreefernsoftheworld.'

`This mushroom has a hole in the top! So do the others. I wonder what that's about.' 

`Margaret's poncho is so yellow. So very yellow.'