Tag: Pate Hollow Trail

The fifth season has arrived. Unless Winter has mercy and provides a white blanket, it will look like this for at least four months. Sigh. And I did saturate the colors beyond the legal limits.

After all the spring wildflowers are gone, there is not much left blooming here. So these little flowers came as a surprise when I found them on my Pate Hollow Trail.

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What we have here is Chimaphila maculata, or the Striped Wintergreen (an odd name for a summer wildflower).

Endangered, it says for Indiana.

This has been my first time with this rare misfit, and I hope it is here to stay.

Snowfall overnight in late April is rare here, but has its own strange appeal.

Unfortunately I had other obligations this morning, so I couldn’t go on a longer expedition, so I paid our campus a visit.

While the trees have mostly managed the extra burden, most flowers did not.

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It’s not all sadness. Hours later, the snow was all gone, and the recovery has begun.

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In the afternoon I went on a short hike at Pate Hollow. Many wildflowers were gone here, and tree blossoms have fallen. Grayness has returned.

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But there still is life,

and thus hope.

Spring is finally here.

Apparently, my eyes have adjusted to notice details I wasn’t aware of last year.

And of course, with the flowers come the bugs, and the bug-eaters… I noticed those before.

Pussyfoot seems to like moss, too:

At a larger scale, only the warm colors tell us that the time of the three suns is over, for now.

The end of winter marks the time when I started to walk the Pate Hollow trail on an almost daily basis, to stay physically fit and mentally sane.

I know this trail like a close friend, in every mood and season. I mostly walked in the early morning hours, but lately I enjoyed the late evenings, after sunset, using a flashlight for the last half an hour.

The light at dawn has a different quality than at dusk, it has a certain tiredness to it that I can’t explain, but which feels good, like being tired after having persisted, through a day, or through a year.

There is also a certain urgency to this hour, to complete the circle before the time is up.

Darkness enables intimacy — maybe because it forces us to focus harder, maybe because the visible is so close by.

A year has passed. I will treasure every minute spent with a good friend.

Southern Indiana can have some violent weather, and the forests are often littered with branches and fallen trees.

Most people think that they just lie there and rot away, providing nutrients for the Mycelium.

But healthy forests have special places, hidden away from the trails, where the fallen trees are being cared for.

There are various forms of burial rites, including a careful shrouding with dried grasses.

If you stumble across a place like this, spend a few minutes and say your prayer.

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After 4-5 inches of snow over night, I couldn’t resist to get up early to be the first on Pate Hollow. Well, I wasn’t quite the first, as numerous animal tracks testify, but otherwise the trail was so completely virginal that it was almost invisible.

Snow increases gravity, which is why I have changed the usual aspect ratio from 3:2 to 2:1.

There is resistance against the gravity, and efforts of verticality have become more pronounced against the uniformly white backdrop.

The Black and White contrast makes it possible to spot the Baxter branch in a trail-less valley down below which we will pay a visit soon.

Then there is my favorite detour to the desolate peninsula.

The lake only appears to be frozen. Snow can be treacherous, too.

I return to the trail: but where is it?

As time expands (it took me three instead of the usual two hours to hike this trail today), the attempts to defy gravity become more and more futile.

But there is no giving up. Just look at these pine needles!