Snow snow snowshoeing

Frozen Fern "growing" out of the snow. I found a bunch of these lovelies!

Yesterday, I noticed my brother left his snowshoes in the back of my car. For the first time in weeks, it was above freezing outside, so I just had to get out into the woods and try those shoes out. I went to a long disused logging road across the pond from some well established beaver brook trails.

Today, I'm still divided on my opinion of them. True, they kept me above the 3+ feet of snow in some places. But in other places, I plummeted hip deep and then had the grueling struggle of picking those cumbersome metal frames out of the tight holes they made. The snow quickly turning to 3 feet of slush in the 40 degree weather, I couldn't just kick through the snow to pick myself back up. This would have been fine albeit annoying, normally, but I was making my way to a hill topped with a rather large bobcat ~ and had I noticed him sooner, I would have been worried he was scoping me out as injured prey ripe for the picking and probably would have been a lot less collected in my struggles.

These tracks are from the beginning of my trek - when the snow was still frozen from being in the shadow of the valley.

While I did not manage to snap a pic of the bobcat who took off as soon as locked eyes with him, I did take some other interesting photos. My hike reached a literal apex when I crested the very steep hill that the bobcat had claimed earlier where I found not only his tracks, but deer and opossum tracks too.

Witch Hazel Flowers. The only forest blooms of winter! Reminding myself that witch hazels are in flower when there is hip deep snow on the ground makes winter seem a little less overbearing.

This is an opossum trail. The little hand prints inside the trail were muddled together making a bad picture, but the trail itself was whimsical, in my opinion. A well used thoroughfare, it snaked all over the hill, curving tightly in places where I couldn't see any obstruction to case such twists. The trail could have easily been a straight line with half the distance from point A to B. When inspecting the 6 inch wide trail, I noted fresh coyote tracks pacing after the latest opossum tracks.

And lastly, these are the bobcat tracks. Keep in mind, I'm a piano player - my fingers aren't short. These are definitely the largest bobcat tracks I've ever seen. From the back side of the hill, I measured 4 feet in between each pair of side by side prints to show he was bounding away from my direction through the snow. Thank goodness he was more afraid of me than I was of him or else, with my clumsy shoes and tiny switch blade for protection (its more for plant cuttings, but I like to pretend it affords me some protection on my solitary hikes) I would be bobcat chow by now. XD

Summer Flora

Between a lovely trip to Pickity Place's Gardens and Maple Farm Gardens at Beaver Brook, I've no shortage of vegetation images this year. The above was a flower tucked away in the back of Pickity Place's garden. Pickity Place is a historic old farmhouse which served as the reference for illustrations in a very old printing of Little Red Riding Hood.

The blue flowers are also from Pickity Place. They reminded me of the 'Blue Girls' in my current writing project so I took the snapshot to remind me to work harder on my writings. lol















The mushroom was on a trail near Maple Hill Farm's gardens. If you click and expand it, it makes a whimsical wallpaper. So do fields of daisies...









And lastly I have 2 unknown flowers. The yellow one is from Pickity Place. It was unusual as it bloomed downward and compact. The other is from Beaver Brook and my sister and were intrigued by it, so I took a shot for her.

June Compilation 2010

American Toad on Kidder Mountain
Wood Turtle Mama in Merrimack

Red Eft (eastern spotted newt in land phase)

Over the past 2 weeks, I've been taking a lot of random nature photos. I don't really have much of a story for any of them this time around, but these will give you a taste of my recent adventures (which have been sadly far and few but should pick up again soon).

Mountain Laurel Blooms at Monson

Waterlilies to the Sky

Dragonfly Buddy at Beaver Brook

"Heavy" Snow

Over the past couple of days, our area of New Hampshire has been on the brink of freezing. As a result, the snowfall has been very wet and very heavy. With powdery, drier snow, the trees are not weighted and splashed in white, but with the past few storms, they're weighted with pounds upon pounds of thick snow.

These photos were from my walk today in Beaver Brook. I took the Whiting Trail down to the main trails. It was a tough walk. In many places, the trail was over knee deep in heavy snow; not the kind you can just trudge and kick through.
The last picture of the bridge and the pine hill I took carefully whilst driving into Wilton. Not bad considering the car was moving. Don't worry. There was no other cars around at the time and I was very careful. ;)