A rare sort of winter day

Yesterday, between Alberta clippers number four and five, the sky was clear, the sun brilliant.  I took my camera for a ride.

Every morning I go down into the valley to go to work.  My favorite route is Kendall Road.  Its name changes to Truxell half way down; all our roads have first names and the Truxell farm was on this road.  Charles Truxell was a trustee in the sixties. Hayward Kendall donated a huge tract of land to the state to be used in perpetuity for park purposes, and named in honor of his mother, Virginia Kendall.  It was a state park when I grew up, and now is part of the national park that ate Boston.

The road in the summer is canopied over by the tree leaves.  My summer pictures of driving through a tunnel of deciduous trees have not been spectacular.  But the reason for the canopy is so evident in the winter months I got successful pictures of their bones.

I pulled in and out of parking lots the entire length of the road.  Beside Kendall Lake, there are trailheads for The Ledges and for The Octagon rock trails.  Every parking lot is lined with quarried rock; there were two major quarries in the area up to the twentieth century.  One quarry now is The Quarry, a summer swimming hole for kids, and the other is Deep Lock Quarry, maintained by the Metropolitan Park Service.

When I left home with the camera my intent was to take pictures of shadows The blazing blue sky wound up preempting shadows, but here is an interesting tree.

This is one of many creeks through the glacial ravines that empty into the lake.  There is another little water course behind my house that travels to the lake.  About twenty years ago, with township zoning only slightly more lax than it currently is, the landowner up the hill behind us decided to clear cut his woods.  Nothing I said to the township or the EPA resulted in a stop work order.  At the next big rain storm the stark naked hill of course descended by the tons into our little creek.  Smothered our apple orchard, too.  When an EPA fellow finally appeared he shook his head and said “Lady, you have a helluva mess here.”  Jan and I went toe to toe with the Amish chainsawers and saved trees on our property.  That’s a good story for some time.

Eventually the hill washed entirely downstream to the lake and silted it in.  It had to be drained and dredged a couple of years ago.  It didn’t have to happen.  Here’s the lake from the parking lot, and a deer trail.

Many of the shelters at the trail heads were WPA projects that became state or local parks, and now part of the National Park.  I love the stonework and am happy it’s being maintained. Steps to a trail and an interesting tree.

At the end of the road I turned at the golf course and came back.  The tree is at the end of one of the lakes on the golf course, and the lakes have what the fire district calls dry hydrants.  Along the road there are two pipes that terminate in the lake and can be attached to the tanker by a hose at the working end.  If there is a fire in the district, godforbid, the tankers take on loads of water at the lake and go fight the fire.  For years the hydrants were black.  One day one of my favorite fireman, Nick, put down a receipt for paint and brushes on my desk, and went out and painted them red.  They still look spiffy.

I made my U turn to come home, and was obliged to take this picture:

Almost all year long our narrow township roads are clogged by spandex warriors.  We clean up their stinking sports drink bottles.  Often we can’t get out of our own roads to go grocery shopping.  And we even have to tell them how to behave.  Another story.  I guess I’ll be in business for awhile.