A Walk in the Woods (part two)

 If there are too many words,  just enjoy the pictures. My sister Rachel took these at the park yesterday.

It's a gray and wintery kind of day, perfect for snuggling up with a cozy afghan. More pictures from yesterday's walk in the woods. I wasn't the only one wearing a camera.

I intentionally traded my brown alpaca mittens for a pop of color. I found some pretty great red ones in my little basket of hats and gloves, and I'd taken my spiffy scarf along to keep my face warm, just in case.


The trees and bushes were full of little feathered friends looking for a handout. They know that people mean sunflowers seeds and they're almost always eager to be friends. They landed in our hands one after the other, and sometimes two or three at a time. Rachel said one even landed on my head for a second before taking off again. I was wearing my hood.




We hadn't taken any birdseed with us (I don't know what we were thinking...) but some kind soul ahead of us had left a pile on the trail. I scooped up a handful and we were abundantly rewarded for the meager effort.

We eventually dropped what few seeds remained and headed off down the snow-covered trail. Along the way we passed some folks on snowshoes and another with cross-country skis. We trudged along looking for something wonderful, but saw only snow and trees, which are wonderfully beautiful in their own way, but don't make extraordinary pictures.

Down the hill and around the bend, the trail went off in two different directions.  We chose the trail less traveled and soon found ourselves without a trail at all. Rachel blazed a new one and I followed along behind, the snow up to our knees, headed in the direction of the trail we'd taken earlier. Our toes were getting cold, and our cheeks stung with the bite of the wind. It was almost like being a kid again, out in the little strip of woods by our childhood home.

Closer to  the trail head we ran into our feathered friends again. They were all excited to see us, but we were out of seeds. I stopped to take more pictures; chickadees and sparrows, titmouses, cardinals, bluejays, and even a pair of red bellied woodpeckers, along with two little red squirrels who were ever so much more tame than Little Red here at home outside my window.