Contemplative Turtle

Last week I came across this fellow. It appears that he's just being mellow, calmly contemplating nature. I can't blame him one little bit. The picture below is the area immediately upstream of his perch. Not a bad place to live.

A bright star in the trees

Just the sun poking through the trees. I took this picture near the suspension bridge at Eno River Park this past Sunday.

Bridge to the other side

I went on a hike today at Eno River Park with a ground of about 15 people. It's a group that Julie's been a member of for a while but it was the first time I went hiking with them. I'm not much of a "joiner", y'know?

This is part of the group wandering across a suspension bridge. The bridge bounced a lot and was great fun. It was like drinking heavily and not being sure if you could stay on your feet. The hike was a bit less than 5 miles and it was a great day for it. High 50s and a subdued sunshine made for a pleasant time. You should have been there with us! Rolling hills and well groomed trails, river views and mossy logs--but no snakes this time. Sorry.

Green river and Julie

The picture above was taken in Eno River Park and to no surprise then, the subject is Eno River itself. I took the picture on Saturday and immediately after, Julie took a similar picture with her camera. And since two people wrote to ask me about Julie, below is a picture of her taking a picture of the scene in the picture above. That's a lot of uses of the word "picture".


To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a picture of a human has graced this website. I'm quite certain there's never been a picture of me on here! I think of this as my anti-human blog so it'll probably be a long, long time before you see the human form on here again.

Saturday was a really good day for picture taking. It'd rained the day before and everything was greener than it'd been in several weeks.

Mushroom Tree

Yeah, yeah. I know. Mushrooms don't grow in trees--but they do grow on trees and there's a freakin' bunch of them on this tree. Of course the attraction of this picture, taken earlier today at Eno Park, owes a lot to the green backdrop. We finally received some rain on Friday and while it was only a quarter inch or so, it greened up the leaves quite a bit.

Sunny Day in Eno

I took this picture last weekend at Eno River park. I'm planning on going hiking there again this Saturday so I'll get more pictures. Oh, joy.

This time I'm going to try to drag my sorry ass out of bed early so I can get better light. Late afternoon light is pretty filtered through a tree like in the picture above--but it's too unrelenting to make for the pictures I prefer. For those, getting early morning--before dawn is best--light really helps. I just wish I wasn't allergic to mornings!

Meditation on the river

The picture above is a spot on Buckquarter Creek in the Eno River Park. To me it looks like a perfect place to meditate. It's beautiful there, even with the water so low due to our drought, and the sound of the water moving over the rocks is quite calming.

Here's a map of the trails near the creek if you're curious.

Below is a closeup of one of the rocks that you see in the picture above. These rocks are normally under a foot or two of water and they're so smooth and hard that they resemble the old iron you see in civil war era cannons. The rock even feels like metal and is perfect for sitting on or laying against. The cool rock felt wonderful in the hot sun of this late September day.

Eno River

I was hiking in Eno River park on Sunday and took bunches of pictures. Over 130 in all. The day was warm but pleasant and absolutely sun drenched. Here's one of the pictures: