Peak of Fall Hiking

A very good friend took this photo of me standing behind a recently fallen giant, an old-growth upland white ash tree that was alive and well less than a year ago. It fell sometime between winter and spring this past year. Another naturalist friend was quite devastated by its toppling, because it was really, really old, long pre-dating the timber clearing of the mid-19th to the early 20th century in the Adirondacks. This old ash had a girth of greater than 10 feet. Actually, the 10 feet might be its measure in diameter. Humungous.

I am very surprised by how dwarfed I am by it in this photo. It didn't seem so at the time, and granted, it's not the best photo, but you get the idea that my 5 foot 8-inch frame is obliterated by this **massive** tree. (Given that I'm not as svelte as I once was, that's probably a good thing!)
Glorious multi-color foliage that knocked our socks off during this climb on the southwestern slopes of Crane Mountain. Lots of fun! No wonder I'm not doing any reading. I am working away on work as much as I can, given the distractions and handicaps of the beauty of nature at the moment, but no leisure reading at all this week. The weather has been phenomenally cooperative during this foliage season, I must say--unusually so, to the detriment of work. Oh, phooey on work.

This glorious fall time of year is so terribly short-lived, you can rest assured I'll be catching up on reading before you know it.

I'm waiting for the arrival of Patterns of Childhood by Christa Wolf, which I'm reading for German Literary Month. 446 pages. Wow.
And I must post my Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol post! Gads--I just can't seem to catch up with myself.