November woods

Hike-Ku for Goldsmith Woodlands

Copper, Bronze, Old Gold
November's leafy burnish
settles on the woods.

You can see from the picture that I was busily collecting precious metals. Or a variety of scarlet and pin oak leaves colored like them.

And now for something completely different: Steve and I went for a hike. "Nooooooooo", I hear you saying. . .We took a turn around the Goldsmith woods - a place we usually cross country ski through - but it is the 60 in 60 book, so off we went. And wow, it gets dark early in the woods. Really early. Like 4:15 early and since we didn't get started until we were done with our respective work days we ran out of daylight pretty fast. Time to start carrying the flashlight when we leave for the woods at this time of year. It was beautiful though - and unmistakeably November in the woods. And, I always love to report this kind of thing - because, well, at my age, how often do you say "we saw something new at a place we've been going for years". It's kind of like my excitement over the new very cool and tasty way to cook Kale. We found a boardwalk we never knew existed on the Foster's pond end of the reservation. It was built in 2004, another of the ubiquitous Eagle Scout projects that dot conservation land around here, but apparently every time we've been by it's been covered by snow and at the bottom of a short but very steep grade, so we did not explore further. One truism of the woods is that snow completely changes your relationship to the topography