Like Falling Off a Log

Today David and I took Penny down to Sandogardy Pond. I saw some trailing arbutus in bloom on the way, first one of the year:

Trailing Arbutus (Epigaea repens)

I still haven’t seen any with open blooms yet on my property though. When I took this photo, I prolly should have put the camera on the tripod. I had to set the exposure time to 1/8 seconds, which is a pretty long time. This actually came out pretty good considering I was holding the camera in my hand when I took it. Usually, it blurs when I leave the shutter open that long.

When we got to the pond I found another set of great blue heron tracks under the water. I cast a set of those a while back. There was a married (?) couple at the pond with a little girl (she must have been three years old), so I told them about the tracks, and they wanted to see them. They seemed happy when they spotted them, and surprised at how big they were. I guess these were six inches long, but that’s small compared to the tracks I cast a year and a half ago. Those were more like eight inches long.

David and I walked along the stream that empties the pond then. David crossed the snowmobile/ATV bridge, and then crossed back over a log. On the off chance that he might fall in, I got out the camera and set it on the continuous shooting mode. Here he is over the center of the stream:

David cross a log

You can see “Thomas the Tank Engine” behind him to the right of that clump of reeds (or maybe it’s alder) in the stream.

And here he is moments after he put his weight on a section that may have been a little too decayed:

Look out!

The water was only a couple inches deep where he landed, and he wasn’t much worse for the wear. He said later that the fungus growing on the branch should have been a tip off. And I agree!