New York: Day 1

DAY 1

No sticky snow here so far. All we had was a light sprinkle of sugary snow that melted when it hit the ground. Oh well. At least it isn't raining. Temperatures hovered around 25 degrees and it actually got colder instead of warming up in the afternoon.  The remote camera appears to work, but so far it hasn't caught anything. I will try moving it further back in the woods, maybe in the clearing at the halfway point of our trail. I have seen little piles of deer pellets so I know they are back there.

We know we are close to the house when all we can see on either side of the road are pine trees.

This trailer across the street is for sale if anyone wants to be neighbors. $34,000 for 38 acres of undeveloped land...get it before it's gone!

Yep, the house is still standing.

I ventured out with Dad to check out a new trail he blazed
with some orange flags four months ago. It turned out to be much wetter
than expected. He took it right through the middle of a swamp. We bought a few hundred yards of
orange caution tape at a local hardware store and this is what we tie around the trees. I don't think this
is a practical trail to follow year round, but we did find some neato things at ground level.

These little things are everywhere once you get past the first stone wall. Resembling fuzzy green bottle brushes or pipe cleaners, this stuff forms a thick green carpet in some areas of the forest floor. I thought these were baby pine trees,
but it turns out they are a form of oversized moss called Lycopodeum.
They don't get any bigger than this, about 2 inches in height.

I noticed an interesting thing about the thin ice that forms from puddles of water.
You can see these odd ripples or contour lines. I remarked it looks like a tiny topographical map.

A new tree growing from the fallen log of a dead one. That's kinda cool.

I have NO IDEA how this ice forms. These are ice crystals that appear to have somehow
'grown' from a patch of very wet mud. I wonder if it's frozen water vapor?

When i stumbled on this I thought was some kind of fungus.

...But on close inspection, it's very thin fibers of ice.
Have you ever seen ice form this way? They shatter like glass.

 I saw no furry things really, except a white tail deer about 50 yards away that bounded into a thicket when he heard me. They move so fast, the only thing I even notice is the white tail. One of these days I will snag a pic of one. They are such majestic creatures, they move like they only weigh a few ounces.

What gets me about this place is how utterly black it gets at night.
Back home we have have so much light pollution from Wilmington and Philadelphia
that it never really gets dark,  the sky glows orangey pink at night. Here it is so
pitch black without the moon, you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
You can't tell from this picture, but the stars are very bright.

This shot was taken from the back deck on a tripod, with about a 25 second exposure. Very nice lens flare.

The best part of being out in the cold...
coming back in to get toasty in front of Grandma's wood stove in the kitchen.