Rotten Tree

On January 24th, I went for a hike. The snow wasn't as deep as it could have been, but it was fresh and very cold out.  Exposed to the wind, it was enough to make your eyes water and my breath was fogging up the camera's eyepiece as I tried to shoot things.

It was pretty quiet aside from creaking trees, my boots crunching the snow, and the odd small forest critter that sounded like Sasquatch. The path I was taking stayed in a tree line and didn't offer much in the way to look at or any interesting vistas to photograph. While I had never been on the trail before, I knew it was roughly an oval, and there was no means of cutting across it to shorten it, so if I didn't go back at some point, I wouldn't return before it started to snow.

After about 30 mins of nothing interesting to see, I decided that after a further 300 hundred paces I would turn around. At that point, I stopped, looked up and down the trail and shrugged. I felt another hundred or so wouldn't hurt. Soon after, I rounded a bend and came out of the tree line into an area with a clear cut or fire burned slope. A bit of a ways up the slope I came across this tree. Or what was left of it. Completely rotten and dead. Perhaps 2m tall. No other tree looked like it. There were other dead trees in the area - standing and fallen, but none dry, crumbling or this colour. It really stood out in the landscape.

Had I initially given in to the cold and boredom, I would never have seen this tree. Seeing it made the trip worth while. The next time you feel you are not getting anywhere with something and want to give up, press on a bit farther. You never know what you might accomplish, or what you might miss out on.

Mike