I was feeling a bit down and disconnected as I took my afternoon journey down Piney Woods Church Road. My mood seeped nto this image and its title, I think. There is a touch of melancholy to this image of a half-eaten pecan nut (left behind by a gray squirrel, no doubt), resting on a fencepost at the edge of a roadside horse pasture. An old mule barn provides a blurry blue-gray geometric form in the background.
On my early afternoon walk down Piney Woods Church Road today, my attention was drawn to a fascinating relationship between a shrub of some kind and an adjacent muscadine. A woody tendril of the vine cradled a single leaf from the shrub, holding it in place. How did this happen? Did the tendrils turn first, to wrap around some long-gone form, and then the leaf just happened to be blown into a vine’s embrace? Or did the tendrils somehow develop around the leaf, pinning it motionless? Equally mysterious is how I managed to walk past it for weeks, or even months, never noticing it before today.
The more leaves I see on my walk this time of year, the more I appreciate their rich diversity. Each December leaf is a survivor of the growing season, carrying the scars of its journey from spring through autumn. It is those very scars that give each leaf its individual beauty and spark our capacity for wonder and delight. Like the Dirt Road Pilgrim who photographs them, these leaves, too, are pilgrims across time. They are also holy relics: doorways into the sacredness at the heart of nature.
It was a balmy day along Piney Woods Church Road, with temperatures nudging into the upper 60s. I searched for the same spider I had seen yesterday, but found another one — much larger than the first — instead. This lovely orbweaver rested calmly at the center of her (most likely a she) web, not even fazed when I brought my camera lens close. This is her underside; efforts to photograph her top side were largely foiled by the locations of nearby loblolly pines. I saw lots of other small insects darting about, so clearly a food source was readily available. Still, I was surprised to see spiders active after our hard frost of a week or so ago, when nighttime temperatures plunged into the lower 20s.
I have since learned that this spider is Larinia directa, a species common to the lower South. It is not mentioned in my guide to Spiders of the Carolinas, suggesting that it is not common there. I am not surprised by this, given that the spider is still active so late in the autumn.
In the early morning, I encounter worlds in water drops still clinging to a naked branch….
On my way to an early morning appointment, I stopped the car at a drainage ditch along Piney Woods Church Road. After months of being dry, the ditch had filled with water after yesterday morning’s rainfall. In the bitter cold that has followed, the water as iced over, leaving patterns of water bubbles near the surface. Below are three photos of the bubbles, converted to black and white with a dark blue filter applied. I find myself entranced by these frozen patterns of concentric circles.
A lone yellowed greenbrier leaf is framed by adjacent branches in the early afternoon light along Piney Woods Church Road.
Here are two zig-zagging images from today’s saunter down Piney Woods Church Road:
Today was overcast and breezy, not quite cold but suggesting a change in the air. It was late afternoon when I set out, and perhaps sixty degrees; tomorrow, the forecast calls for winds up to 35 mph and a high barely exceeding fifty. The tree leaves’ changing colors stood out magnificently against the gray sky. Here are two images of autumn splendor from the walk: the first is an impressionistic shot of the foliage of a sassafras tree along the road; the second, an image of three oak leaves and the spaces between (and within).
With a yellow leaf as background, a muscadine vine twists back upon itself, evoking the inevitable return of Spring and then in time Autumn again.
