Seeing Clearly

Idaho's seasons

Many people come to Sun Valley, Idaho in the winter to ski.  They're missing out on what I think are the best seasons.  The summertime allows for camping in the cool mountain air, and on the Earnest Hemingway memorial it states, "Best of all, he loved the fall."  Autumn is quite special as well, after the heat of summer has gone and the leaves display their glorious color.

This picture could have been taken in any season, but it shows the Smoky Mountains, to the west of the Wood River Valley.

This surely does look like summertime in the Sawtooth Mountains.  Maybe that is Snowyside Peak in the distance at the right.  There are 216 mountains taller than this in Idaho.

This looks like autumn with the brown grasses, dried at the end of the growing season.

Southern Idaho's autumn is predominantly colored yellow from Aspen and Cottonwood, but the riparian areas and northern Idaho give some reds and oranges in the fall.  This is Freezout Ridge in northern Idaho's Clearwater Mountains, with red huckleberry bushes.

Here's another look at the Smoky Mountains, in the fall.  The aspen are green and gold patchwork in the sagebrush ocean.  The north side of the hills gets enough shade from the sun that evergreen trees can grow.  The southern exposure is too hot and dry for a tree seed to germinate and thrive.

There is a downside to living in a ski resort community.  It snows.  It snows a lot.  You can see my neighbor on his roof, shoveling what looks to be about four feet of compressed snow.  First I would shovel the driveway, then I would get up on top of the snow piles, and shovel the piles away from the driveway.

These are the Boulder Mountains as seen from Galena Summit on a clear morning after a heavy overnight snow.  I saw this view my first week in Idaho.

Maine 2012 (Autumn fungi)

I've fallen behind in blogging, so will just pour this beauty onto the page in one big post.  Maine (or anywhere in New England, to be honest) in the fall just can't be beat.  I grew up there, and here's a picture of my homestead ... long before I was a resident there.  The house is some 150 years old.

Sullivan, Maine.

An autumn hike (Cyndi).

Autumn leaves, beech tree.

Blueberry fields in the fall.

Wave impact at Schoodic Point, Acadia National Park.

Northern Gannet.

Another treeline, this one at the edge of the salt spray zone, showing the pink granite bedrock of the Maine coast.

I'm tempted to say this is an angry ocean.  It was heaving and churning with a stiff breeze blowing cold spindrift onshore amid the clacking of cobbles and the explosive whoomp of the waves compressing air in the caverns at the edge of the sea.  But the ocean is dispassionate, and the seawater coursing through our bodies cares not for the external tempest we call life.

A herd of brown toadstools, showing off their gills.

A shelf fungus exudes moisture from its pores in the damp forest.

Squirrel.

A Hydnum type of fungus, I believe.

Lobster fungus, and though it may not be as tasty as the crustacean, I'm told it is edible ... but check this out carefully before you take my word for it.  I have not eaten one.  I am quite cautious about eating mushrooms, because one wrong identification can have disastrous consequences.  I do love to look at them, though!

Mushrooms and moss.

A yellow Hydnum type fungus.  I'm not a mycologist, but with this many non-vascular plants to be found ... if I lived in Maine, I think I would be!

If this was red, I would have called it "British Soldiers."  But it is pink, and I think it may be the fruiting bodies of a form of lichen.  This is a close-up, they're very tiny.

A colorful toadstool, perhaps in the Amanita family, a deadly poisonous one.

A pure white mushroom with wondrous translucency showcasing the gills.

Autumn color reflected in the ripples of an abandoned granite quarry now filled with water.

The brilliant varied color of Staghorn Sumac in the fall.