Robert (gurdonark) wrote,
Robert
gurdonark

Green like a moss, white like a lichen, red like a berry

Gurdonark on Sister Grove Trail

Today I went hiking at Sister Grove Trail, the little mildly remote county park in the scraggle woods not far from Princeton, Texas. Temperature: 70 degrees F. or so.



I stopped off on the way to Sister Grove and mailed off an eBay sale, then drove over the Lake Lavon bridge to the little country road that leads to this bike-and-hike trail. Although the park had a lot of visitors, I only ran into two of them--actually 3, if you count the huge, gorgeous Great Dane dog that jogged behind one cyclist. When I was a boy, we owned Great Danes, and I have a soft spot for that breed. I am glad that the fashion is now to abstain from clipping the ears. I remember those curious ear vises our young dogs had to wear after the ear cutting when I was a boy.

Sister Grove Grass Sea, Winter 2009

In the winter, the grass becomes a sea of yellows, whites and browns, and rolls in wind-swept waves among the green cedars. It's unutterably lovely, but little-known, as it involves no mountain's majesty, fruited plains nor alabaster cities gleaming.

When I first pulled up, a mockingbird was in a tree just a few feet from me. Although I had the little Kodak 10x optical zoom camera my sister very generously gave me, I could not get a good bead on it, and it flew away, unsnapped. I must read up on the optical zoom on that camera, as it feels more 3X than 10X, due to, no doubt, yet another user error.

The little cheap 4 MP digicam I got for 30 dollars or so on eBay, with its directions in Mandarin, has been a wizard and a true star. It takes pictures with a kind of built-in vintage look. Another of my cheap digital cameras seems to have a manual white setting that is not rendering good picture quality, and I must read that manual, which is largely in a non-verbal international symbolic language I do not speak. Yet the 4 mp and the "non-zoom" images from the Kodak were entirely adequate to my task.

Sister Grove Trail in north Texas, Winter 2009

I loved the way that the trail featured lots of bare trees, a few trees in green leaf, some birdsong but not too much, holly berries, and tons of very mossy green trees and lichen-covered tree trunks.

Lichen, Sister Grove Park, Collin County, Texas

I also love delays on cameras, and looking off into the distance, waiting for the camera to go "SNAP".

Sister Grove Whimsy, February 2009

I stopped by which/wich on the way home, for a turkey sandwich with lettuce and sauerkraut, and then I was well-contented.
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