Following up on yesterday’s “light in the October forest them,” I wanted to post another image that I took of the forest at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge that shows a fallen tree in the woods illuminated by some of those mid-autumn sunbeams.

On a windy day scenes, such as this, are a great reminder of why you need to stay on the path.  If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to see it happen, did it really happen. Of course, it did.  But it soes speak eloquently to the ephemeral nature of our world. Also there is the important point that in nature sameness is an illusion. There seems to be a clockwork going on, but there are always small variations. The forest evolve toward climax and on a longer time-scale the plants and creatures that we see evolve as well.

It is not so very long ago, perhaps 10,000 years,  that these lands were flooded by glacial lakes Assabet and Sudbury.  And before that it was covered with a mile thick ice sheet. And all of that is merely pittance in the geological history of the world. When I walk in the woods, I think about these forces. It is ironic that the very systematic periodicities that seem to defy change, in fact, accentuate it in our imaginations.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM at 105 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/500th sec at f/7.1, with -1 Exposure Compensation.