... mt. washington, arctic winter in new england ...
... early in the morning john and i drove up to smalls falls on the sandy river to investigate the season's ice cascade ... we'd hoped for some nice sunrise light, but when we got there snow squalls were dropping out of a very low cloud ceiling ...
... john began to play with his new "super-duper" lens ...
... in much warmer weather, of course, both liz and adrien learned to swim in these pools of pristine water ...
... how many times, i ask myself, did i spend a summer afternoon hurling myself from the rocky ledges into the deep basins below ...
... now an icy cavern, in the summer, if you're brave enough to find it, there's a little opening behind the falls within which one can hide away from the world ...
... this day the water and ice performed a phantasmagorical duet ...
... john trained his lens towards the sound of a woodpecker busily seeking supper in the bark of a tree ...
... i, lacking a super-duper lens of my own, instead used my wide angle to create a sort of "where's waldo" image of the feathered creature ...
... as we left the sun came out, gently painting the falls with morning's soft colors ...
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU