Wonderland

Stratford is a township in the northwest corner of New York's Fulton County.  It covers about 77 square miles of the earth's surface, and supports 640 full time residents.  8 people per square mile.  Less in the colder months, since many of the locals do what they can to spend time in warmer places.

The population density is even more astounding when considering that Stratford is a 4 hour drive from the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn.  That's assuming the arrival or departure from downstate is near 3 AM, to minimize the travel-limiting effects of the 38,000 or so people per square mile found there.

Roughly 1300 feet higher than Lake Ontario to the west, like most of the Adirondacks, the town collects moisture from the lake and from regional storms in the form of snow.  Lots of it.  As one drives up from the lowlands, the weather changes significantly, the snowbanks grow, and you enter Wonderland.

The open spaces beckon, but Wonderland is mostly  in the woods.

Welcome to Wonderland.

Up the hill and into the woods
on skis or snowshoes,
depending on preferences and conditions.

Choose a direction.
It really doesn't matter.
Don't worry about getting lost on such a nice day.
Follow your tracks or the sun to get back home.

Hardwoods, 

or Hemlocks?

We'll explore both.

Curls of the paper birch bark catch the snow.

Slim trimmed limbs grace this space.

Not only is a grove of mature hemlocks a visual delight,
the snow caught in the limbs blots out sounds
to make for a rare total silence.

A gust catches the tall top of a nearby lifeless trunk.
The silence is broken by an ominous creaking.
Look up and look out, Mary!

Lattice work created by the big wind a day before.

Mushrooms and driven snow
hugging the same tree.

Someone else was here first.
Perhaps a fisher,
or a porcupine dragging his belly through the snow.

Quite pretty, these small hemlocks, thick at the edge of a swamp.
After the 3rd failed attempt,
it was determined that going around
was preferred to going through.

Time to follow the sun back home.

Almost there, we see a sign of human activity.
Thank goodness snowshoeing and skiing are not mentioned,
and that we forgive those who trespass against us.

Back home, one realizes that
even the edges of the dwellings
are conscripted for Wonderland.

But some just don't care.