Overcast with periods of rain. Later in the day, showers were heavy with some graupel or hail mixed in at times. Moderate winds with gusts associated with showers later. Temperatures in the 40s.
Outside time was limited to a drive out the road, and a short walk in the forest off the Starrigavan Campground.
I’ve never poked around in the woods upland of Starrigavan campground. Today I decided to change that.
I parked at a campsite where it looked like I could get into the woods without any trouble.
There seemed to be a network of crisscrossing trails. I’m guessing mostly due to deer, but probably also the occasional young (at-heart) person. Maybe hunters go back this way at times, though they would be more likely to head directly further up into the woods.
I was curious about some cut logs. At first I thought they might have been cut to make access for a trail/route easier, but that didn’t really seem to be the case. There were only one or two cuts in the logs I saw. Enough to knock them down, but certainly not cut up into sections for firewood. Perhaps someone was just practicing with a saw.
I saw one tree that raised questions. What first caught my eye was the hollowed out appearance and bare volcanic ash underneath. Normally I would expect moss I couldn’t figure out how it had grown. It’s possible someone (or an animal) had dug it out [Update: reviewing photos, I could see it had been excavated]. There were no remnants of any old wood that would have suggested it got started on an old log.
There was one vertical support. The bulk of the lower part of the tree went more horizontally over the hollow. From some angles it looked like it could have been tipped from the roots earlier in its life, but that theory doesn’t really fit with the vertical support.
I devoted a good chunk of the day to working on my backlog of photojournals. I was curious how long it might take to do a month, so I picked February of last year. I first picked photos for each day of the month without giving it too much thought. I was mainly interested in getting at least a handful to have something up when I published.
The rain started up again, which prompted me to head back to my car. I may try to revisit this area and explore a little further (or at least get better photos of the mysteriously growing tree).
It took longer to add titles and captions. I didn’t push straight through on that. After getting a bit more than week’s worth, I chose to upload and go to the posts to get them published. Then I went back and did a second week. So as of the time I’m writing , the first two weeks of February 2024 photojournals are available in the archive. [Update: February 2024 is now complete]
If I lower the bar for titles and captions and don’t take the time to add inline photos on each post, I could cut down the time to publish significantly. It may come to that, but for now I’m holding the line on titles, captions, and inline images.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
