Best Time In the Woods

Early this mid November morning I went to the Woods. Overnight the weather had changed from near 80 yesterday to low 30's.. grey white sky. The past couple of days most of the leaves have come down. Some of the last are the cottonwoods. Now on the forest floor they turn the Woods to gold. The Grandfather cottonwood on the SW Trail still has near a full canopy of green leaves. I wonder if this is because it has roots down to better water.. or if it is a stress symptom.. or is genetic.
With a 20 mph wind, hour after hour last few days, I thought the ponds would lose a lot of water; but they both looked good. The East Pond has 0.74 feet and is maybe about one third its normal size. The West Pond has 1.88 feet and looks about 85% normal size.
Standing at the West Pond I heard a pileated woodpecker and then watched it fly in and begin to forage on a tree up on the plateau. The East pond has a sheen of organic oil from decomposition (maybe oil from new cottonwood leaves?).

This is the best time to be in the Woods. Full of light and color.. cool/ cold enough so no ticks or mosquitoes.. the understory open enough to see trees and features in the Woods hidden in summer. It is a good time to leave the familiar trails, go and explore new hidden things.. find new big trees, new tree species, new places. I began to see again the line of old sentinel cedars along the once upon a time fence rows; full of limbs from open field growth, overtopped now standing dead or tilted over, giving way to hackberry, walnut, elm, pecan. I puzzled again over several small trees (Viburnum?) with opposite small thorns and rounded reddish-yellow leaves with apical indented tip.. bark light mocha.. pebbly texture like miniature version of persimmon bark.. with smaller pebbles and much lighter color. The same white flower as the shrub at the east side of the West Pond?

Walking down in the dry Western Wash.. an amazing find, a new blooming light purple/ lavender violet.. one blossom.. on this early winter/ late fall day.. just above the junction of the East and West Wash.

Back in the sheltered ravines a 'bottle trail' branching west through the junk of a half century ago.. old bottles with unique miniature ecosystems.. healthy green moss cushions, protected catch basins for the rain.
There are three old car frames stripped to nothing but the heaviest metal parts, suspension, transmission, gear box and frame.
Up to the plateau and a potential route along the edge to the northwest corner of the top of the Ravine trail.

On the plateau 4-5 deer ran away northeast. I brought a saw and cleared some of the tangle of the broken ash top on the West Dune trail. Paraphrasing Robert Frost.. "something there is that doesn't love a trail.. that sends the crashing tree top and drops the tangling brier".
The old slow moving mangy bitch was south of the Grandfather cottonwood on the south side of the Dune. I think a trail can be made from the post by the Grandfather south. I need to blue blaze the tops of the old orange posts out in the western sedges.

Good time to think about why the smaller separate beds of sedge are distributed where they are.. and to see the zones of Lonicera Japanese honeysuckle (putting out new green leaves). The well defined contours/ elevation limits ( a few vertical centimeters) of flood inundation vs survival and growth.