Fresh Fall Woods and New Trail Paint Blazes

Back briefly to the Woods, the NE Gate, just before sunset. Priscilla had provided a supply of blue marking paint and I took a can with me to the Elm Bridge. There I marked the new trail I had made south along the western side of the wash down to the service road. I need the saw to clear off several large down trees across the new trail but it already is fairly easy to follow. I walked on up the Creekside Trail (northern section), walked Hackberry Alley, took the Northern Loop and returned up the Pipeline Trail in late twilight freshening paint where it was needed. At the jct Hackberry Alley and Trans OWP a dog barked maybe a 100 yds west. I did not see but yelled "Hey"..no reply. Not good if dogs start to regularly hang out in the Woods and hunt wildlife.

Previous day, Saturday 13 Nov I enjoyed going to the Woods and slowly wandering off trail as I used to do.. getting lost and discovering interesting features. I found again the row of old limby cedars running west to Hackberry Alley half way from Tall stump to the Trans OWP Jct. Noted again the sharp line between honeysuckle and no honeysuckle produced by the floods; found a second beautiful fresh white Hydnum toothed fungus on a stump where the great display of Coprinus had been out earlier. Sitting for a while inside the three way split mulberry by the cotton rat nest and partly hidden there I watched a family of three deer, doe, buck with modest antlers and yearling move past me. I was downwind and they peered in my direction but could not see me well. A pair of small kinglet-sized birds paused at the Elm Bridge while I rested there. I disturbed a large hawk that flew from the tree tops by the Elm Bridge.
After the one third inch rain on Friday the 12th, water was flowing at the Island Crossing but not beyond the Elm Bridge. With 70-80 percent of the leaves down the forest floor is beginning to green up again.. violets, buttercups(?), Geum, evergreen Euonymus, patches of Stellaria chickweed and similar sized small forbs. Bright red berries on Lonicera shrub west of the Burr Oak Bridge. Clambering up onto the huge Burr Oak washed out and fallen across the Wash upstream from the Burr Oak Bridge.. it had been used as a pooping station that morning by something eating a lot of hackberry seeds. There were two or three piles deposited well up on bole of the tilted tree.