On The Trail Again

Yesterday the trifecta of what I've been waiting for finally happened. Smokeless air, cooperative weather and improved shoulder coincided at last and found me heading for a short walk along the Pend d'Oreille Bay trail. Can hardly justify calling this broad smooth and mostly flat trail a hiking one, but it was just what I needed and could handle. Look at that smile! (See more about this trail in this post.)

Granted, it was a coolish sweatshirt sort of day, with the sun straining at times to show through a thin high flat cloud cover, but at least rain was not in the forecast as it was for today. On the drive to the trail head, I'd noticed these puffy clouds against the flat gray sky, how many values of gray were represented, and was reminded of an "Ode to Gray" I'd recently read on The Paris Review. I agree with the author, by the way, on many of her points about what makes gray so great. I could definitely use the Paynes Gray in my little watercolor set to paint these clouds that seemed to lean towards a blue tint.

I've been wanting to get back to this trail because of a tree formation I'd discovered just off of it, one I thought I might like to sketch. I decided to leave the sketchbook home this time and take the camera instead. Just getting out to walk seemed enough of an effort for now. What caught my eye was the way the tree that had bent (but not uprooted) to rest on the nearby incline had sprouted a new trunk that has shot far into the sky. I've seen this one other time when I lived in Wisconsin.

And in this case, not one but two new trunks grow along the angled one.

They both go as high as the surrounding trees, straight and tall, their tops hidden in branches and leaves.

Moss grows on the rough bark, and the base of one of the new trunks undulates and creates a visual texture not unlike as if it were growing straight out of the ground.

After capturing these images, I walked a bit further up the trail before deciding not to press my physical luck and head back to the car. My eyes were mostly on the trail and the lake, but by chance I happened to look the other direction where these bright Mountain Ash berries glowed as if electrified.

For such an otherwise somber and shadowy walk, this splash of color was a great way to end it.