I hiked at Mountwood Park yesterday because I wanted to get away from the house and clear my head, and peak color season is the best time to climb that big hill. Once I left the parking lot, I didn't see another person on a two-hour hike, but I did see a red-tailed hawk and a pair of pileated woodpeckers and some Canada geese and two deer and about a million squirrels and chipmunks.
I don't like to switch lenses while walking so I used the wide-angle lens on the way up and the telephoto on the way down, which means I had exactly the wrong lens on the camera when a big doe stepped in front of me. It's kind of amazing how quickly a deer can disappear in the woods; first she's standing broadside to the trail, not moving a muscle, and then with a twitch she's invisible, moving swiftly but silently through the thick woods.
One squirrel makes more noise moving across the forest floor than a whole herd of deer, and my presence seemed to throw them into a panic. One chipmunk ran frantically to a tree and then stood stock-still on the trunk--If I don't move, she can't see me--while others rioted through the undergrowth seeking hiding places.
At the top of the hill I rested near the ruins of an oil baron's mansion, looking up through leaves so yellow they seemed to glow. I paused by the remains of old rock walls that defined the edge of a meadow now thickly covered in second-growth forest where brilliant flashes of red, yellow, and orange leaves contrast sharply with trunks dark black or bare, blasted white. On the way down I turned aside to look closely at witch hazel blossoms just starting to emerge; in a few weeks, those tiny yellow flags will provide one of the few spots of color in woods bare of leaves. Today, though, a riot of color erupts in the woods, beckoning all those who need to fill their eyes with beauty.
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| Witch hazel blossoms |
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