An Actual Hike in a dusting of snow. Views.

As part of the Overall Life Management Program currently in effect, yours truly is committed to getting out in the woods wayyy more often than heretofore. Thus it was that our heroine didst find herself up on the nearest ridge today with the inimitable Miss G. (Full name redacted to hide from the google borg. For all I know, Miss G. is on the lam from the law and doesn’t need her name bandied about.)

We got a dusting of first sleet, and then snow last night, as evidenced by a thin sheen of ice on the beech twigs:

I confess, this is something I have never before seen. I’ve seen ice. I’ve seen drops of water along twigs. But I have never encountered frozen drops of water complete with stress fractures. Life never ceases to amaze me.

A mile and a half from the trailhead, there was this view to contend with:

Yeah, poor us, out and about, the only ones in the woods, with a 180 degree view of the Green Mountains.

 

Yep, life’s a bitch. That’s Haystack and Snow in the distance (the faint white stripes in the mist are the ski runs); if it weren’t so cloudy, you’d see Stratton and behind that, Bromley. Incidentally, I know these shots are not earth-shattering, but I am trying to get in the habit of watermarking my photos. Who knows why. Whatever. Let’s move on.

After we got to this viewing point, we continued north along the ridgeline. There’s a longer hike – actually, several hikes – along here that are best suited to the one-car-at-one-end, one-car-at-the-other-end technique. Miss G. and I agreed, we’ve got our eye on doing a couple. I just have to time ‘em to fall on my shorter run weekends. Since tomorrow’s long run is only three miles (next weekend’s is ten), I figured I had a good five miles in me today. So off we went, ‘sploring. (Neither one of us had headed north from this point on the ridgeline.)

The clouds and sun played leapfrog, occasionally blessing us with shadows and golden light. Yep, those are beech leaves in the understory. Good eye, reader.

 

For the most part, we talked and talked and talked – I didn’t take too many pictures. But whenever the sun peeked out, I’d grab a few shots.

 

I pretended to Not Take pictures of G. I didn’t fool her.

 

You know you can count on me for having a look at the underside of a shelf mushroom.

On the way home, I had to stop and admire the meadows I’ve been exploring lately in recent posts.

Could life be any better?

Meanwhile, back on the homefront, Best Beloved is contending with allergies. To what, you may ask: show me the pollen. Ain’t no pollen out there. Ahhh, no, but what there is, is mold, to which Best Beloved is allergic. Mold?! Ick! Not the “your house needs to be dismantled and replaced with an identical new house” kind of mold. The naturally-occurring-in-dirt kind. This is what mud season is allll about. The earth softens up, and the molds have a party. Note to self: get a HEPA filter for the vacuum cleaner. Maybe that will help.

Well, kids, that was today. Tomorrow I am hoping there will be more of the same – perhaps a meander in the meadows above and the streams that wend their way through ‘em.