autumn afternoon

10.17.20 ~ farm relic ~ Avery Farm Nature Preserve
Ledyard & Groton, Connecticut

We don’t usually take walks after lunch, but yesterday Tim had a lot of meetings in the morning so we decided to take an afternoon walk. We visited Avery Farm Nature Preserve back in May so this time we went back and took a different trail. We got some rain a couple of times last week, so it was good to see a brook with some water in it.

leaves in Haley Brook

There is still a lot of green on the trees, and mostly yellow on the ones that have turned. It was a challenge finding red or orange ones, but maybe they will appear next week when the colors are supposed to peak.

looking down Haley Brook
this tree with some root aboveground seems to be bound to the boulder
same tree, different angle, and an interesting assortment of orbs
sunlit sapling poking through leaf litter
bandit hiding behind glacial erratic
golden yellow
yellow and green
the largest glacial erratic of the day
tangle of twigs and leaves
crimson

I wonder what you are doing to-day — if you have been to meeting? To-day has been a fair day, very still and blue. To-night the crimson children are playing in the west, and to-morrow will be colder. How sweet if I could see you, and talk of all these things! Please write us very soon. The days with you last September seem a great way off, and to meet you again, delightful. I’m sure it won’t be long before we sit together.
~ Emily Dickinson
(Letter to Josiah Gilbert Holland & Elizabeth Chapin Holland, Late Autumn, 1853)

rusty orange
double burl
study in brown
mellow yellow
sunlit trail
burnt orange

The light was beautiful, the air crisp and delightful to breathe in. We even caught a whiff of smoke from someone’s woodstove. Quite a few excited woodpeckers were calling and flitting from tree to tree. Autumn. It felt good to be alive!

36 thoughts on “autumn afternoon”

  1. There is SO much to SEE in all your photos. I feel entertained in the bestest way. Some people I know who sees fairies and gnomes and such, tell me that such orbs mean these kind of Nature beings. I have no reason to misbelieve them πŸ™‚

    1. Thank you, Jeff! Are you getting out and about with your camera these days? I miss all the lovely nature photos you used to post. β™‘

      1. Barbara, Mostly getting out with my phone camera which works pretty well… Most photos a posted on Facebook… yet I spend more of my time in the kitchen making healthy meals while styling the dishes for a photo session to post…

        1. I don’t spend much time on Facebook these days. Forgive me for ignoring your healthy meal photos — because of my gut problems I cannot eat high fiber foods any more and gazing at food photos heightens my sense of loss. (When I do sneak a peek they do look incredibly delicious!)

    1. Thank you, Peggy! It was nice having you along on our wanderings. I have a book of Emily Dickinson’s letters which are just as lovely as her poems.

        1. My favorite poet. Have you read “Emily Dickinson as a Second Language” by Greg Mattingly? I’ve been browsing through it a bit at a time — it’s interesting how she used words in such an unusual way.

    1. Wondering what’s wrong with me, I don’t see the small face! (See Susan’s comment above.) I love the rusty orange, too, it was a rare find that day. Most of the leaves seem to be yellow and brown this year.

      1. It’s mixed within the leaves’ shadows on the tree at the top. I’m always seeing things (faces, hearts, etc) in things, lol. I checked out Susan’s comment, I’m not seeing hers, darn it!

        1. Still can’t see it, lol. As the scientists say, the eyes look, but the brain sees. I guess my brain is resisting the seeing of faces these days. πŸ™‚

  2. **sigh** What an incredibly calming and gentle walk that was, Barbara. It was so lovely to join you and Tim and to share the beauty with you. xx

    1. Thanks for sharing our autumn walk, Joanne. I wish I could send the sounds and smells into the blogosphere to complete the experience. πŸ™‚ β™‘

  3. Autumn is the best time to walk, isn’t it? Fun to walk along with you and Tim. This may be peering too far into the future, but will you be able to continue walks like this in the winter? Or does your snow get too deep? PS So glad with you to be alive!

    1. Autumn is definitely the best time to walk! We intend to walk as much as possible come winter, in fact, I just ordered a pair of footless tights to add under my pants for warmth. And a smaller winter jacket because of my weight loss. Down here by the shore we don’t get nearly as much snow as you do, except for the occasional coastal storm/blizzard/nor’easter.

  4. This walk was savored while you took it, photographed it, wrote about it and in the cold and dreary days of Winter, you’ll remember this enjoyable trek. Your glacial erratics are so large! I was in a small park where I saw some for the first time – they had a brass plate with their history on them. There is nothing like an Autumn day in the woods.

    1. We’ve been kind of dazzled by the glacial erratics we’ve been finding on our walks. We didn’t have any in the woods I grew up in about 50 miles north of here, although I have since learned there are many of them elsewhere in my home town. It’s a wonder how colonial farmers found enough land to grow crops on and is probably a major reason so many of them abandoned their land and went west. The woods are full of crumbling stone walls left over from their pastures.

      1. I’m dazzled by those glacial erratics photos you are posting. They are huge … the one I saw, my first and only one, was in a small nature area on Grosse Ile, an island on the Detroit River (where the lighthouse is). The free bridge has been closed down for repairs since May and through December and I won’t take the toll bridge, not only because it is a $5.00 toll back and forth, but I don’t want to handle money or tokens and then be using the camera near my face. Call me paranoid, but I stopped using the camera for a solid month for that reason, then just used the point-and-shoot camera away from my face. Our stats are growing, as are other states’ stats. Anyway, I’ll go back next year again. I like to visit the alpaca farm and have done a few posts on the alpacas who, like the folks who run the place, are very friendly. It would be terribly to be dependent upon the weather to have a good crop and feed your family, have enough to sell at market. It must have been discouraging. We had so much rain in Michigan last year, the farmers were in dire straits. It rained too much and too long into Summer to plant and what crops were planted, got ruined by saturation from the never-ending rain. If you look at the very last picture in this post, you’ll see the glacial erratic I was enthused about and it is tiny compared to yours you’ve been featuring.
        https://lindaschaubblog.net/2019/09/09/sojourn-in-the-sticks/

        1. I don’t think you are paranoid — you are being very sensible! Our numbers are going up, too, so we’re maintaining our very strict vigilance. Looking at glacial erratics reminds me how our lifetimes (and life itself) are such a short interval in relation to the long span of geologic eras. How huge those ice sheets must have been to carry those erratics so far and wide. Moving so slowly and yet in the blink of an eye in the epochs of time. Awe-inspiring…

          I’m off to look at the glacial erratic at your link. πŸ™‚

          1. I heard our Governor speaking today as well as Dr. Khaldun, who is the head of Health and Human Services for the State of Michigan. It does not sound good and the Governor and Dr. Khaldun begged Michiganders to wear our masks, even inside the house, if you are around people who are not family members that you know are “safe” and COVID-19 free. They are extremely worried about the holidays and will likely shut down in-seat learning, even for colleges, after Thanksgiving. They shut down a major university yesterday, allowing them only to attend class/go for food – this is because U of M has its first football game this Saturday – no fans are allowed but they fear students will gather at parties = Super Spreader events. I got a refillable gasoline card after using cash for gas since I began driving in 1973. I don’t handle cash for anything else. Luckily the grocery store is large and carries everything so there are no errands to the hardware store, etc. to pick up miscellaneous items. I am prepared to hunker down all Winter, just escaping to the Park where there are really only a few people I speak to – the older couple in their late 70s/maybe early 80s (Arnie and Carol) – they don’t wear masks at the Park but they tell you it is not necessary – I do so anyway.

            It is amazing to think about the erratics on their long journey and arriving intact after being bumped around to the point you’d assume they would crack or suffer other damage.

          2. Yes, Dr. Fauci is not seeing his family for Thanksgiving, which is a good indicator of what would be the best course of action for the rest of us. My sister teaches at Connecticut College and the administration started this semester early and condensed the coursework and classes so it will be finished by Thanksgiving. That way the students don’t have to come back to campus after the holiday. We talked about meeting at the beach, no food, just a short visit so we can wave at each other, eight feet apart with face masks and those plastic face shields on, but maybe we won’t feel safe enough to do even that by the time Thanksgiving rolls around.

            I’m glad to hear you are prepared to hunker down for the winter. I think we are, too, I can’t think of anything else we can do since our bubble is very tight already. Maybe start having our groceries delivered again, but I think we could eat for a while without shopping if need be. Looks like we’re in for a very rough winter. I wear a mask in the woods, too. I look at it as a way to signal to others I am serious about social distancing. Most people we encounter in the woods are not wearing masks, however, and a few don’t move away when they see us, so we often wind up walking off the trail to keep our distance. Sigh…

A box for your thoughts...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.