The other day I went to Five Rivers to do a Raptor count. Before the count started I had time for a walk around the Beaver Tree Trail. The pond was still frozen - the ice looked brindled in jade and black swirls. On the opposite side of the pond, the ice was white. I know I have read explanations of what makes the ice different colors, but right now it was enough to enjoy the creativity of colors moving in elegant frozen waves. Icicles hung from the spillway. Reaching down into the water flowing beneath them. The last vestiges of winter. Rushes were bent and broken by winter winds, snow, and ice. Soon, new growth would replace them. The earth was brown with ozzy mud. The kind that is just as slippery as ice. Hopeful trees were budded crimson against the sky. Willows flushed orange, so stark and striking. The sky was layered in soft blues, white and grey. Dampness seeped from the ground and folded around me. The Raptor count is a DEC project which counts the rapto...
Spring is the season of running water. Earth thaws, comes alive, and is exuberant to start running. Water wants to go! Last weekend a friend and I made a pilgrimage to flowing water by visiting four waterfalls in the Adirondacks: Auger Falls, Griffin Falls, East Jimmy Creek Falls in Wells, and Beecher Creek Falls in the town of Edinburg. (I leave any commentary about the names of the Falls to another time, just mentioning that Native Americans name landforms for a quality found in them, not for some dude that stumbled on them or bought them!) Auger Falls was cavorting through a gorge in the Sacandaga River. The water frothed and foamed in white and the clear, translucent tea color that the hemlock-stained tannins provide. The rushing, jumping, twirling movement of the river, as it lept from boulders was thunderous. Watching the course of the water was mesmerizing, even hypnotic! A cool spray rose from the falls. With it came the smell of "cedar water" - a way of ...
I can't believe that I haven't posted since May 23! Four months! I have had some wonderful nature experiences, but for some reason, I have writers' block. Well, Barberville Falls rushed over me and said - get with it! I went to the Falls in Poesten Kill with a friend. The guidebook says that the 92-foot falls are "spectacular"! An understatement to be sure! The volume of water from heavy rains the week before made the falls an absolute torrent! It rushed and pounded seemingly from every rock. The water was a frothy white like it was being whisked by an invisible hand. Tannins in the stream created a cream latte color. Water thundered over the rocks with such force that the base of the falls was churring and creating waves. These waves of water caught the wind and turned back on themselves creating rainbows in the mist. It seemed that the mist was jumping off the water with abandon, reaching up into the colors and creating more. All this under a clear blue sky...
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