The Road of Many Colors

We were backpacking in the Sproul State Forest Thursday night, and I was wakened several times by the howling of coyotes. In the wee hours of very early morning, they were joined by some hoot owls. Last week's Quehanna Wild Area trip may have been the bark, bugle, and howl; this week's Sproul trip was the hoot and howl. That's what I respect about the animals in the wilds; they do love to party. :-)

The night had been chilly, with a low just above freezing where we were; I know there must have been frost out under the open sky. It's tough to move quickly when your hands are cold even with your gloves on. So we took our time Friday morning airing out our gear, packing up, and walking out to my car, which was parked on a gravel road nearby.

We tossed our gear in the car and went and sat in the sun for a while at mid-day. I found a stand of late-season milkweed pods, full of fluffy white paratroopers that sailed away on every breeze. I played Johnny Appleseed, but with milkweed seeds instead of apple cores, and I tossed those babies to the four winds. Go, go, and grow, and become food for next year's monarch caterpillars! I cried.

And finally, it was time to get in the car and head home. It's really quite easy to tell when it's time to leave the woods: when you run out of food and drink! And so that's exactly what we did. We traveled from Sproul State Forest down into Snow Shoe, via route 144, through the woods.

The colors along the road were fabulous, as pretty as anything I've seen in this year's foliage show. The show can be like that - one week, just a little bit of color, the next, amazing - like somebody flipped on a switch.

Such a miracle, really. Who'd have thought to put such beautiful color in the trees - color that only starts to turn on when the daylight shortens and it begins to get cold out? And the sun was on them perfectly, as we were heading mostly south and west.

My husband was exclaiming Look, look, look at the colors! There was hardly anywhere to pull over safely along the road for photos, so I started taking pictures from the passenger seat, looking straight out the front window. The above photo is one of my efforts. I hope you enjoy it!

The song to accompany this image is a favorite of mine from childhood: Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors. Here is a version that is just Dolly. And here is another version I like that features Dolly and Shania Twain.

Back through the years I go wanderin' once again
Back to the seasons of my youth
I recall a box of rags someone gave us
And how my momma put the rags to use . . .