Hiking Mid-October on Mt. Lemmon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Fall colors abound
Creating a tapestry
On the mountain trails.
— kenne
Archive for the ‘Fall Colors’ Category
Mt. Lemmon Fall Colors 2 comments
A November Hike To Hutch’s Pool 2 comments
Fall Colors Along Sabino Creek Hiking to Hutch’s Pool — Panorama by kenne
One of my favorite hikes is to Hutch’s Pool. In the past, the Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists (SCVN)
would guide a fall and spring hike, each hike having a many as 15 hikers.
However, like so many things, not this fall because of the pandemic.
The trail is open, but not for groups.
— kenne
* * * * *
I bear many scars,
but I also carry with me moments
that would not have happened
if I had not dared
to go beyond my limits.
— Paulo Coelho
Crossing Sabino Creek Below Hutch’s Pool — Image by kenne
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Aspen Draw Trail — Fall Colors 1 comment
Aspen Draw Trail On Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
Walk the mountain trails
Beauty is all around us
Never to forget.
The words miss the mark
If only they could capture
The moment in time.
So, we keep trying
To share visual moments
And all its beauty.
— kenne
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Cabin In The Woods 1 comment
Cabin In The Woods (Mt. Lemmon) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
I wish I could escape to that cabin in the woods,
Where the trees have a face like no other.
And those trees play songs,
with the breeze sweeping through their branches.
I wish I could hear their songs.
Not just hear, but to actively listen
Because they fill their chords with notes of love.
I want their tunes to brush my ear
and their leaves to gently cover me from above.
The leaves that don’t crunch or wither or die.
The leaves are full of ever-increasing life.
When the fallen leaves have touched my skin
Chills cover my flesh and shoot me with a sensation.
I have been touched by this gracious life.
— from Cabin In The Woods by Little.Bird
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Fall On The Mountain 1 comment
Mt. Lemmon Colors — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The closer you get to nature
the more your personal values
become your reason for living.
— kenne
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Fall Colors — Mt. Lemmon Leave a comment
October Colors on Mt. Lemmon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Fall
Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
— Edward Hirsch (from his 1986 book of poems, Wild Gratitude)
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Early Aspen Colors On Mt. Lemmon 1 comment
Early Aspen Colors on Mt. Lemmon (October 8, 2020) — Images by kenne
Most trails on Mt. Lemmon remain closed after the Bighorn fire, leaving
many burn-scarred areas. As a result, photographing the fall colors will be limited
to Summerhaven and Ski Valley.
— kenne
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Fall Colors In The Desert Winter Leave a comment
Cottonwoods Creating Fall Colors In The Desert Winter (01/02/20) — Image by kenne
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Saying Goodbye To Fall On Mt. Lemmon Leave a comment
Saying Goodbye to Fall On Mt. Lemmon — Photo-artistry by kenne
We have passed through fall, for now,
Saying goodbye to falling leaves,
Relaced by falling snowflakes,
Blanketing the narrow forest trails.
* * * * *
“The ten hours’ light is abating,
And a late bird wings across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.”
— kenne
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The Blast of The Self 1 comment
An Aspen Fall — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In a letter dated 4/26/03, by brother Tom wrote:
“I am in the midst of ‘trying’ to memorize a poem . . .
‘Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour’ by Wallace Stevens . . .
never mind why . . .
although the exercise was triggered by a piece by
George Steiner in which he wrote:
‘The danger is that the text or music will lose what physics
calls its ‘critical mass,’ its implosive powers within
the echo chambers of the self.'”
Tom was aware that what is committed to memory
and susceptible to recall constitutes “The Blast of The Self,”
an intensity of outward attention — interest, curiosity,
a healthy obsession was a motivation stronger
even than love or hatred or fear.
— kenne
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
— Wallace Stevens
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Mt. Lemmon Fall Colors, A Gift From The Mountain Gods 1 comment
Mt. Lemmon Fall Colors, A Gift From The Mountain Gods
— Photo-Artistry by kenne
Autumn Song
Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse’s flowers will not last;
Nurses to the graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.
Whispering neighbours, left and right,
Pluck us from the real delight;
And the active hands must freeze
Lonely on the separate knees.
Dead in hundreds at the back
Follow wooden in our track,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.
Starving through the leafless wood
Trolls run scolding for their food;
And the nightingale is dumb,
And the angel will not come.
Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain’s lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.
— W. H. Auden
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Another Take On A Old Image Leave a comment
Another Take On A Old Image — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders,
and people get knocked off.
The earth, for geological reasons that are well known,
is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent.
Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed
cannot be regarded as evil.
— Simon Winchester
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Hiking with Old Buddies 1 comment
The SCVN Friday Nature Hike was Aspen Trail, Marshall Gulch Trail loop,
which would provide an opportunity to see the beautiful fall colors on Mt. Lemmon.
The Aspen Trail has a grove of aspens, which I blogged in a previous posting.
After hiking through the aspen grove, I began to get out in front of the nature hikers.
With less fall color on the remaining part of the Aspen Trail I decided to pick-up my pace.
I knew from past experience there would be plenty of fall color on the Marshall Gulch Trail.
I was aware that my buddies, Jim Thompson and Tom Markey, were hiking the trail;
hence, I might be able to catch up with them.
I first began hiking with Jim and Tom nine years ago. They were part of the Monday Morning Milers (MMM),
the first hiking group with which I started hiking.
Most of the MMM were lifetime hikers in southeast Arizona, many of whom were in their 80’s.
Jim recently celebrated his 90th birthday.
While Tom is a youngster like me, he’s 79.
Images by kenne
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern,
And ceases to be a mere sequence —
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind,
A means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness — not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination —
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.
— from “Four Quartets” by T. S. Eliot
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Sabino Canyon Fall Colors Panoramas 4 comments
Sabino Canyon Fall Colors Along Sabino Creek Panoramas — Photo-Essay by kenne
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Rain Drops On Autumn Leaves Leave a comment
Rain Drops On Autumn Leaves — Image by kenne
there’s a dry cold air
remaining after a dawn rain
in the high desert mountains
not cold enough to snow
yet cold enough
to send a chill
throughout your body
the morning sunrise guides light
inside the dark forest
just ahead of a morning jogger
following a trail
forming a seam
across the forest floor
carpeted with leaves
of red and gold
dotted with raindrops
appearing to jump
as the returning light
glimmers through
each temporary dome
soon to disappear
beneath a winter blanket of snow
— kenne
