autumn

A City Day

/ Ellen Kolb

This is a trip-to-the-city day for me. No time for a walk at home, so I must do what I can in Boston.

Such a great day! I planned weeks ago to come here for a meeting and then head to Cambridge for some research. It’s my luck that the weather’s nice. So where to start walking?
South Station, of course, where the bus from home deposits me. My meeting’s on Tremont Street. Join the crowd crossing Atlantic Ave., and then keep going down Summer Street, which becomes Winter Street (really!). Bob and weave through the crowd. Suddenly there’s the Common and Tremont Street, after five or so minutes of almost-aerobic exercise. My meeting site is another three minutes down Tremont.

A short walk, but it’s sometimes subway material. If I were still limping from last February’s knee injury, I’d take the subway and be grateful. Not today, though.

Meeting’s over. The Common is in full sunshine, autumn leaves still looking pleasant: that’s my lunch stop. Then I break down and take the Red Line to Cambridge, only because I haven’t the time to walk the three miles. From the subway stop, my destination is five brisk minutes away. Everyone in Cambridge walks briskly, so there’s less need than in Boston to weave through the crowd.

Round trip, that’ll give me maybe twenty-five minutes of walking for the day. Nothing dramatic. I’m pleased, though. Spending those 25 minutes in a subway car on a day like this would no fun at all.

October, Pack Monadnock

/ Ellen Kolb

Columbus Day weekend is wrapping up for the leaf-peepers. Autumn colors are still muted in my area, except for a few specimen trees flashing scarlet. I figured the Monadnocks would be a little showier today. I stole a couple of hours from my schedule this morning and headed to Miller State Park in time for a walk up the auto road before it opened to cars for the day. I actually spent time alone on the summit of Pack Monadnock! A rare treat, that. I thank God for days like this.

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From the Pack Monadnock summit: Mt. Monadnock, about twelve miles away.

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Near the base of the auto road. My guess is that the P on this marker is for Peterborough, one of three towns that can lay claim to part of Pack Monadnock.

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Plenty of colorful foliage over there on North Pack Monadnock.

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When I took my kids to Pack Monadnock when they were little, the first thing they wanted to check from the summit was whether it was “a Boston day,” clear enough to see Beantown’s skyline. Today was a Boston day.

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Bleached by the sun’s glare: the New Boston Air Force Station’s radomes on the left, city of Manchester, New Hampshire on the right.

And here’s the Granite State Walker, offering a chocolate-milk toast to the physical therapist who helped me get my knee back into shape this year.me-on-pack-monadnock

Fall, now muted

/ Ellen Kolb

Is it mysterious, or just poorly focused?

November, Naticook Lake

November, Naticook Lake

I walked to Naticook Lake again this week – a familiar place to me in summer, but I’d never really noticed it in autumn before, so every recent walk there has been a little journey of re-discovery. I came across it in the oddest light late in the day. I saw the last of the colorful leaves floating on the lake, so out came the camera phone for a quick shot. When I reviewed the photo later, there was this muted hazy look. The camera itself was fine; other shots taken that day were sharp as could be. Somehow, I had caught the light on the lake at just the right time for this almost-smudgy look. I used a high-resolution setting, with Auto exposure and no adjustments to white balance. Had there been a macro setting, the shot would probably be clearer, but less interesting IMHO. I deleted a photo of the same scene taken on the “Cloudy” setting, because it imposed an unnatural shade of yellow on everything.

The park has grown quiet with the athletic field no longer humming with youth football, now wrapped up for the season. Too cold for tennis, I guess, since the courts have been empty on my recent visits. I share the lakeshore with only a couple of people at a time, all of us just passing by on our walks, shedding our workdays one step at a time.