... i invited my friend, john, for a little happy birthday wanderabout ... two thermoses of coffee in hand, i showed up at his house at 5:45 am, about an hour and twenty minutes before sunrise ... he lives across the street from hillman's donuts, so, naturally, we provisioned well before leaving town ...
... eventually, a half-hour or so after the time noted in the farmers' almanac, we noticed that with the overcast sky and developing snow squalls there wasn't going to be any sort of spectacular early morning photographic lighting ...
... neither of us cared, we just continued taking pictures ...
... after the wire bridge john suggested we go up the road to kingfield ...
... i found i couldn't decide, so i've left you with a choice ... color ...
... or black & white ... as i said, i like it both ways ...
... i couldn't figure out why john had seemingly so easily found his way from the road down to the river ... i pretty much slid all the way on my butt, as i did so performing several moves for which if i was in the olympic figure skating competition i'm sure i'd have been award 9's (maybe even a 10 from the russian judge) ... i thought it might've been that he's a bit younger than me, but then he 'fessed up that he was wearing crampons on his shoes ... cool, gotta get me a set of those things ...
... i became visually fascinated with this tree limb ...
... the spreading branches and the flowing water in the background were in an interesting perspective relationship which ever so subtlety changed with each movement of my eye ...
... how wonderfully odd, that just a portion of a tree can become in and of itself a destination ...
... i found most interesting the little ice dollops formed beneath a fallen log ...
... i call them "ice dollops" 'cause they're clearly not "icicles" and "frozen stalagmites" just doesn't seem right ...
... i'd have gotten even closer, but the crunching and cracking sounds emanating from beneath my feet reminded me that with the river's recent falling level many of the ice floes were actually hanging as much as two feet above the surface of the fast-flowing frigid water, and that breaking through and then being entangled in the ice would be a very dangerous situation, indeed ... a long time ago, as a child living in alaska, this was something i learned the hard way ...
... the weight of the snow and ice had brought this tree down ... in the summer i'll bet muskrats hide inside the rotted out knots ...
... it looked to me as if john enjoyed his birthday present ...
... at the "woodsman" in kingfield we enjoyed a nice breakfast before heading back to waterfall ... my b-l-t with an over-easy egg tucked inside easily made up for the lack of color in the sunrise ... mmmmmmmmm, good ...