A Foggy Dawn in Freeville

Yesterday morning, I was still awake, finishing a video for my newborn nephew, when I looked out the window and spotted a doe in the backyard.  I went over to the patio door to take a picture, but the doe scurried away.

Noticing the mist, I figured it would be a good morning for pictures of the creek, and it certainly was...

As I was on the dock, I heard a weak "eep" coming from above me.  I turned around to see this:

I wonder if this is the same fawn that I saw laying in my wildflowers a week or two ago.  Not wanting to startle the fawn too much, and knowing that the doe might be not far off keeping an eye on the situation, I stayed on the dock to take a downstream photo:

I turned around again and the fawn was out of sight, so I climbed the stairs to head back to the house, and the fawn was still in the yard.  We had a staring contest...like his/her mom, this young deer is very good at them.   I also shot a short video of the fawn, which may make it onto the Tube of You sometime in the future.  I'm sure this won't be our last encounter.

Sunset on Fall Creek

A couple of weeks ago, the sun was setting directly across the creek from the dock, and I got some nice shots of it.  Hope you enjoy!

Photos from the Dock: Direct Sun Edition

I went outside after dinner to take some photos and see how high the creek was after some thunderstorms rolled through last night.  My weather station reported 0.68" of rain.  I timed it right, as the sun was directly across from the dock, in an opening between trees.

I wasn't the only one enjoying the gorgeous weather...a couple of ducks were enjoying a swim.

I wasn't quick enough on the trigger, but a third duck flew in, quacking away, and drove the other two ducks around the bend, farther up the creek...and farther from me.

By the time I finally got around to taking a picture.  (I tried to shoot a video, but by the time it started recording, the ducks had flown away.)  You can see the ripples on the surface of the water that the ducks churned up in their excitement to get away.

The creek had been running low for most of the week - we haven't had much rain lately - but after last night's thunderstorm, it's come up close to the dock again.   In the photo above, you can see the high water mark from earlier this morning, a couple of inches above the water level.

As I said above, the water had come up to within a couple of inches of the dock.

The creek's edge has greened up quite a bit since my last batch of photos from the dock.

The position of the sun made for some really spectacular photos.

Here's a better shot of that high water mark:

Some of my favorite photos are the reflections in the creek:

The sun settled right into the notch between the trees:

With the sun directly across from the dock, my shadow was climbing the steps:

One last shot of the creek:

A View from the Other Side

A week and a half ago, I took a walk around to the Genung Nature Preserve (view more photos of the preserve here, here, and here).   I snuck off the trail and headed in the direction of my house, looking to snap some photos of the dock and the surrounding area from the opposite bank.

There is a large clearing on the other side of the creek, which, once I broke through a little brush, made it easy to walk around.  Right now, it's still pretty lifeless and brown.

But there are splashes of green, too:

The clearing was ringed by thicker brush, and I had to survey a route down to the creek bank.

As I went, I had to make note of landmarks, like the bent-over tree seen here, to help me find my way back to the trail:

I took time to look back in the direction of the trail so I could remember where I had come from when it was time to go back to the trail.  Wading across the creek wasn't a terribly desirable alternative, with the water temperature still somewhere around 40F.

And finally, I made to the creek's edge:

The creek bank is a great deal flatter here on the inside of the "U" formed by the creek.

And the creek had slowly been receding, as we were in the middle of a dry period.  But it was still wet enough that the bank was muddy.

Looking upstream, directly across from my house.  From this angle, you can really see how the opposite bank steepens going into the bend.

One of my neighbors around the corner has a set of steps leading down to a much shallower-inclined creek edge.  

Here's my dock, from the opposite creek bank.  I've been waiting to take this shot side the day I moved in.  The bank is so much steeper here as the creek turns into the base of the "U".  You can see a couple of signs of the creek's power: the erosion of soil, exposing tree roots in the two feet just above the water line, and the power of ice, which lifted up the metal pole supporting the dock on the right.  The dock's become pretty misshapen, but it's still completely intact and safe to stand on.  I'm guessing that it can be repaired, and hopefully without too much effort.

A closeup showing how the right side of the dock has been lifted up about a foot higher than the left side:

And one more dock shot:

And now we begin to turn and look downstream of the dock:

If it weren't for the trees along the bank's edge, the bank would be even farther back.  Those roots - at least where they're more dense - hold the soil in place.

And then the creek winds around to the other bend in the "U".

The contrast between the developed side of the creek and the natural side of the creek is pretty striking: a straight line of trees behind the houses - possibly planted by settlers quite some time ago? - and the open, sparse vegetation of the undeveloped side of the creek.

Farther downstream, the creek splits around a small island.  This (below) is the right branch.  The left branch passes over the remains of the old mill dam.

And here's a better shot of the island and the waters splitting around it.

I wonder if this area gets flooded in high water:

And with that, I had explored the area that I'd hoped to explore.  Here's a well-worn deer trail that I picked up on my way back to my human trail.