365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
All Der Leaves
Day 23: All der leaves have fallen...cottonwood, maple, willow, cascara, an errant oak, and yes, alder leaves, all have fallen and lie on the old road/trail to the Nisqually-Ohop Creek confluence in a blanket of mottled brown. Unlike a normal Pacific Northwest autumn when they'd be wet, slick, gooey and a serious hazard to your health on several different levels, this year they are dry and crunchy and make a wonderfully satisfying sound as you shuffle through them. I needed to get out today without too much physical challenge, so I chose this easy trail in Nisqually State Park which runs something between a mile and a half to two miles from parking before it dead-ends at the water. The elevation loss is minimal, maybe a couple hundred feet, and on such a gentle slope that you don't really notice until you start climbing back up. There's not a lot to see along the way other than Usnea-covered branches and in season the occasional mushroom, but it's a pretty walk and can be taken as leisurely or as vigorously as one might wish. I loafed my way down today, ambled back in no particular rush, stopping to look at lichens, enjoying the sound of the river, searching for a woodpecker drumming on a tree somewhere out of sight, and surprising a coyote who went bounding off into the forest in a crackle and crunch of leaves, affronted by a human in his personal domain.
Labels:
hiking,
leaves,
Nisqually State Park
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