This morning as the fog burned away I made my way down Piney Woods Church Road. The air was cool and damp, the scent of wet fallen leaves conjuring autumns past. In homage to Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s lovely book, Gifts from the Sea, I offer these two images as Gifts from the Road. The first is entitled “Repose”; the second, “empty::full”.
A native lobelia, possibly Lobelia puberula, blooms in the rain alongside Rico Road, a short distance before the intersection with Piney Woods Church Road and the beginning of my daily walk.
On a drizzling early autumn day, the molted exoskeleton of an Arrowhead Spider lingers in its web like a ghost.
A twig with two shriveled leaves hangs suspended above Piney Woods Church Road, dangling by a single thread of spider’s silk on a cloudy morning.
On a gray, cloudy, misting morning in Chattahoochee Hills, I noticed this leaf lying on Piney Woods Church Road with a circle through it, a window onto the roadbed below.
I have been trying for months now to take a post-worthy photograph of dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium), a native perennial weed that can grow up to seven feet tall and take over pastures and even yards. It has slender, feathery leaves that somehow don’t seem to lend themselves to macro photography. But in silhouette, at the brink of sunset, I can begin to appreciate its beauty.
Whenever things start to feel to complicated in my life, I find solace in the simple juxtapositions of leaf and stone that I find on my daily outings as a dirt road pilgrim. There is a lot we can learn by just looking to the earth upon which we walk.
In a hurry this afternoon (with a Mellow Mushroom pizza awaiting me at home), I jumped out of the car at the intersection of Piney Woods Church Road and Rico Road, walked over to an American Burnweed growing close by, and immediately found this katydid. I love how the katydid’s legs make nearly perfect equilateral triangles.
Walking down Piney Woods Church Road this evening, I chanced upon a fellow pilgrim in the middle of the road, headed, like me, toward Hutcheson Ferry Road. He (or she) was an Orangestriped Oakworm (Anisota senatoria) with a long way to go. I took a few photographs, then an approaching car prompted me to scoop up the pilgrim and relocate him (or her) to the side of the road. Safe journeys, traveler.
On my evening walk down Piney Woods Church Road today, I passed an Arrowhead Spider (Verrucosa arenata) in the center of her web, apparently doing yoga (or else a highly unsuccessful attempt at peek-a-boo).
