Kayaking Massasoit State Park

At work on Friday, I overheard a coworker recommended a pond in Massasoit State Park for canoing, and I determined to try it.  Saturday, November 3rd turned out to be unseasonably warm, so I grabbed the opportunity.  I and my middle son spent about an hour-and-a-

half on the water.  Lake Rico, less than a mile long and irregular in shape, is a beautiful place, and the fall colors made it more so. 

 The sky alone was the worth the price of admission.

 

A scarlet oak against white pines.

 

Yellow fall foliage of silver maple

(Acer saccharinum, or what Thoreau called white maple).

 

Identifying a few plants by fall foliage.

 

 

Paying Attention

Saturday, November 02, 2013

The commonplace also deserves our attention.  Taking the dogs around the block at midmorning, I came upon a red maple in full color.  I stopped, stood on the dogs' leashes, and took photos--some against the sun, others against a beautiful cloudscape, and at different distances--in an effort to capture this rarity.  Continuing on, I immediately encountered no fewer than three more, each as beautiful or more so than the first that I'd lavished attention on. 

I walk this same route regularly, yet was almost thunderstruck today by trees that must have been in their full glory on at least one earlier walk.  So what happened?  After reading in Autumn Tints, I "knew" that red maples are about the first to turn, and sugar maples only later.  I'd attended to sugar maples in full color, and then watched them drop their leaves.  I'd paid more attention to Thoreau's description of "reality" than the thing itself.  So I was surprised.  As well as paying more attention to the commonplace, I need to pay more attention, period.

The scarlet oaks I was disappointed of at Blue Hill

turn out to be fairly common in my neighborhood.

 

I liked the combination of colors here: sugar maple (I think) overhanging,

paper birch, then scarlet oak in the background.

Scarlet oak.

 

 

Autumn Tints

The photo is a month late, but I came across this paragraph in Thoreau's Autumn Tints, and couldn't resist.  Anyay, there are some red maples still lingering in color.

A small red  maple has grown, perchance, far away at the head of some retired valley, a mile from any road, unobserved.  It has faithfully discharged the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer, neglected none of its economies, but added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady growth for so many months, never having gone gadding abroad, and is nearer heaven than it was in the spring.  It has faithfully husbanded its sap, and afforded a shelter to the wandering bird, has long since ripened its seeds and committed them to the winds, and has the satisfaction of knowing, perhaps, that a thousand well-behaved maples are already settled in life somewhere.  It deserves well of Mapledom.  Its leaves have been asking it from time to time, in a whisper, "When shall we redden"?  And now in this month of September, this month of traveling, when men are hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the lakes, this modest maple, still without budging an inch, travels in its reputation,--runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside, which shows that it has finished its summer's work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest.  At the eleventh hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could have detected here when it was most industrious is thus, by the tint of its maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the careless and distant traveler, and leads his thoughts away from the dusty road and into those brave solitudes which it inhabits.  It flashes out conspicuous with all the virtue and beauty of a maple,--Acer rubrum.  We may now read its title, or rubric clear.  Its virtues, not its sins, are as scarlet.
                                                                                                                      -- Henry David Thoreau

Nemasket River, Saturday, September 21, 2013

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Walked with boys to top of Great Blue Hill this pm to see if I could see scarlet oaks in fall color.  Got to top of hill at 5:35, just before trees to east were in complete shadow.  Didn't see much beyond the green of white pine and tan-brown of most oaks.  Very little scarlet--I saw more on the drive up than from the hill.  There were still a few red maples with leaves of yellow and some splashes of scarlet on a few individual leaves.  Beech has barely begun to turn.  sugar maples are about done.  Scrub black oak (5-lobed) at the top is partly turned.

We walked over to the Observatory, looked at the very red setting sun, and then started down by the directest trail while the rocks underfoot became increasingly hard to see.  It was nearly full dark when we got down, around 6pm.