Near to my home in New Hampshire there are a few state forests and parks that I like to visit. Some are small and a few minutes from home, and other are larger and a bit further away.
Often, I just like to go out to these places and relax and wander with the camera. In the past, I’ve often come away disappointed with the results. The forests here are all secondary growth, springing up over the last 100 years after extensive logging or clearance for farms.
This makes the forest very dense, and you quite literally can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s hard to find a focal point.
This time I went out, regardless of the weather and with a mind to ignore the big and focus on the small.
The club footed root of a tree framed by the fallen leaves almost seems like a green ooze flowing across the forest floor.
Abstract patterns made by moss form a landscape in miniature.
While the fungi that seem to ascend the cracks in the bark of tree in neat lines seem to for a ladder for the elves and gnomes of the forest to ascend.
Still further on, Jack Frost has used the bitter cold of the day to use ice as a palette and has drawn abstract figures in the frost.
Moving closer still, the cold has added splinters of frost to the to the tufts of the plats that line the trail.
These will not survive the rays of the sun
