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Buttermilk Falls in Peak Week
Someone told me awhile back that I should include videos on my nature blog. So here’s one: a pan of Buttermilk Falls, in Ithaca.
It might seem strange to film a waterfall. But it provides some context for the gallery that follows: brilliant sunlight and blue sky; vivid leaves; a sense of heights, depths, and distance; and the sound of water perpetually falling. By now, after hard rain a few days ago, there is probably more rushing water — and fewer leaves. We were grateful to be able to get there at the beginning of the week, on the perfect October day.
We hiked up the Gorge Trail — about a mile long, hugging the stream and ascending steeply (475′) up numerous stone staircases beside numerous waterfalls. (This video is taken beside the first one.) At the top, we crossed to the Rim Trail and walked back down through some woods, with little glimpses of the gorge through the trees from time to time. It’s a little more gradual, but you feel the relentless descent in the backs of the legs by the end.
Here’s one more: a view from within the shade of the gorge.
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Colors and more colors
Lovely walk in a nearby nature preserve as the leaves approach their peak.
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Sunflowers
Just when they look their ugliest to me, they are most attractive to the wildlife.
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Great Spangled Fritillary
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Things you see at the Brick Pond
On a walk with my daughters yesterday, we heard a lot of chatter in the treetops, and tiny birds flitted all over the place. But it was difficult to find them quickly enough for a photo. No wonder — considering how well they blend in with the leaves. Can you spot the warbler in this picture?
But they started to get used to our being there, and came a little closer.
Finally, they came in still closer. They were too busy looking for insects to worry about us for long, and soon they surrounded us — a cloud of what we later decided were magnolia warblers, reveling in the warm weather and the swarms of tiny insects around the pond.
An hour zipped by before we even got halfway, but we drank in the late afternoon warmth and color of a beautiful fall day.
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Bluebirds
They’re our state bird, but we don’t see much of them.
They pass through this time of year, traveling in a small flock, and stay for a few days before moving on.
Somehow it’s often on a drab day that we look out and see them searching for insects or puffed out for warmth.
Lovely little spots of color among the branches, and part of the changing pattern of this place.
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Lovely, dark and deep
I took some pictures during a family walk in a hemlock wood today. I’ve played with the Orton effect in editing the photos to try and enhance the feel of the place, so they represent a variation from my usual realistic mode. It was a beautiful, cool early fall day, and the woods had an enchanted feel.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” -
Monarch
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Blog business
I wanted to touch base about a change you may have noticed if you’ve subscribed to this blog. Sometime in August, Feedburner, the service that has handled my email subscriptions, ended. I’ve been trying a new service, but I didn’t realize it included ads in the emails. I don’t care for this and plan to switch to a different plugin in the next week or so. The only catch is that I won’t be able to transfer the list of subscribers this time.
If you are an email subscriber and would like to continue, please feel free to re-subscribe! But whether you do or not, I wanted to express how much I’ve appreciated your interest and support. It has meant a lot to me that there are kindred spirits out there interested in what we see around us when we take the time to look. Thanks for reading!
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Memory Lane
I have several preserves that I visit again and again. Sometimes, I wish I could explore new trails more often than I do. But this morning as I walked this familiar path, I was reminded that I have the companionship of memory — of the many times I’ve been here, and with whom. One of my favorite Wendell Berry stories is the bittersweet “The Boundary,” in which Mat Feltner goes out to repair a fence. He is old, too old for such a foray, and it seems every bend along the familiar creek is populated by others he’s known in the long years he’s lived there, re-enacting the episodes he remembers. He begins to have serious trouble distinguishing present from past, though many of the people he remembers have died.
It was on this trail 10 years ago that I came upon this fawn lying in the grass. When my parents visited for supper later, my father was concerned and wanted to go back and see if the fawn was still there. So we set out on a drizzly evening. My father tucked my mother’s hand under one arm and carried an umbrella in the other, and we trooped off through the woods to make sure all was well. (It was.) Ten years later, my dad is 85; my mom died in May. Being in that place brought them back to me, two pieces of a whole, in a way I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
There were other memories, too:
- The trees where we first saw black and white warblers on Mother’s Day
- The bench where my husband and I sat eating ice cream one evening while a caretaker on a lawnmower drove loudly past, looking straight ahead as he blew grass all over us
- The spot by the creek where my daughters and I always lingered, looking at frogs and tracks in the mud, and feeling peace
There’s much to be said for new adventures! But it’s also good to experience the richness of a familiar place, and its power to restore and affirm who we are.
