My ankle is starting to (finally) show significant improvement, so, armed with a headlamp and a new hiking pole, I went for an evening/night hike.  I left a little too late to catch the best of the sunset, but I’m planning on going back next week, so fingers crossed!

Snow’s on the ground in the hills!  Snow!!!! I’m so excited!  This was taken with just my flash, after the sun had set.  I ran into a member of the TrailWatch program – they bike in the evening to make sure everything’s okay.  He was very unintrusive; just chatted with me for a few minutes to make sure I was confident in what I was doing. (Was I? Yes. Did I still get horribly, horribly lost and have to navigate to the parking lot by map and compass in darkness? Oh, yes.)

The light from my headlamp on some leaves – it’s pretty bright! (I was actually late because I couldn’t get it to work, but I finally figured out it was a battery problem and found new batteries.)  This isn’t a great photo, but I wanted to play with my headlamp a bit to see how things turned out.

There was the last lingering bits of light as I hiked – all the colors were gorgeous, of course.  It was also so cold! I was going at a much faster pace than normal trying to keep warm.

The bright red leaves! (And the pink tinge of the setting sun.)  This fall has been (I’m told) really spread out, so there are trees that have completely dropped their leaves and trees that are just the most brilliant shade of red.

Trees right at the edge of the pond, near the parking lot. (These photos are in reverse chronological order.)

The last, hazy bits of sunlight.

The reflection of the trees in the bog.  The water was completely still and the reflection was so cool.  I have a hunch that this will freeze over in the winter and I’m very excited for ice and snow photography.