Welcome to the (Pennsylvania) Jungle

Saturday was a hall-of-famer, with warmer temperatures, blue sky, and abundant sunshine. What a gorgeous day! Finally, a taste of SPRING!

My husband and I packed up our gear, put on our new boots (yes, we each bought a pair of new Danner Gore-Tex hiking boots online last week at deep discount!), and headed for the woods at Cherry Run.

What little snow that was left was melting. The woods were filled with vernal pools, from whence frogs and tadpoles will spring during the coming weeks. (Thus the term: "spring.") Everything was green.

We hiked up the trail and set our chairs up by the creek and hung out for the day. We tested our new boots by walking in the edges of the creek with them, and they came out unscathed, our feet still dry. Dry is good! To add to the fun of an already gorgeous spring day: new boots! Yay!

Amazingly, we spotted our very first butterfly of the season: a small orange fellow with some black on its wings. I tried to get a picture but it was too fast for me: it zipped by quickly, spinning and dancing, making circles in the air, giddy with the sunshine and the day.

Mesmerized by the reflections of the trees and the rhododendrons in a vernal pool near where we sat, I took many photos. I liked the light and the patterns, the tree shapes, the leaves, the afternoon sun sparkling on the water. And, especially, the way the pool took my world and reflected it back to me, beautiful but changed.

A song for this photo: Guns N' Roses, Welcome to the Jungle.