Around A Cold Quabbin

Daylight Savings

The Kid has managed to find a part time job and in these tough times, this is good. But the job requires that dad drop him off at 6-o'-freakin'-clock in the morning, on the weekend, which in November and subsequent months especially, is not so good.

What to do but brew up a batch of lemonade and take the opportunity to get some morning photography done. I've been wanting to do this for some time anyway. Saturday I tried the Quabbin...

Once you're up and out there, crisp air in the lungs, steaming cup of coffee in hand, camera on stand-by and glasses fogged up, you can begin to appreciate the nuances of a world slowly waking up.

I'm a big fan of the sunset, but they say as far as picture taking goes dawn light is just as good if not better than dusk light. More yellowy-pinky, less orangey-reddy.

Dawn generally just gets less camera play as it requires a suspension of instinct to wake up in the dark and cold. (my instinct, anyway.) But we pulled it off and Sunday I went for round two at my favorite of favorite places to loaf in the woods, Arcadia. This time much closer to the critical hour and much more hurried, thanks to Daylight Savings.

It was just about as cold as Saturday and even though it was cloudy both mornings and the sun took it's time both days, when it finally did break through...

...Blammo.

Everybody up. Fauna...

...and Flora, all surviving and struggling in the sudden lock-up of nature without warmth...

...and humans too, maybe struggling a bit less with the help of their crazy automations.

One thing I noticed photography-wise in these two mornings is that there seems to be a little less less time to get about and look for things to shoot as opposed to sunset. Once that sun is up it seems to go very quickly from that fresh yellowy glow to the standard harsh bright white of the day.

But maybe I'm just groggy.

First Coat

While working on Saturday I was driving through Northampton. It was too late to see this year's Hot Chocolate Run, which I heard topped last year's in participants. The streets had cleared by the time I drove through, but interestingly, there was a horse-drawn carriage making it's way down Main Street.



That's something new. Part of the new B.I.D. project, perhaps?

By nightfall, we were inundated with the season's first blast of white stuff.



But driving north on Sunday morning, it appeared that the snow didn't pile up too much, with some areas whiter than others. We were headed north to Hadley so Kelly could do some Christmas shopping, and decided to go via Belchertown to see how the mighty Quabbin was doing these days...



It is doing well, rest assured. Beautiful as always.





I was keeping an eye out for deer, as they can sometimes be spotted from the road, but none were to be seen. It's deer hunting season right now, maybe they were keeping a low profile...



With all the trees bare, there were some old house foundations and rock walls visible from the roadside. We made mental notes of where they were, to check them out when we come back more prepared for some hiking. We slowly did the road course from one entrance to the other, and back again.



Then on to Hadley...I rode shotgun, snapping scenery along the way. Pretty soon it will all be sparkling white, everywhere. And frigid cold. Winter hasn't even officially arrived yet...





...but it's time to brace for it and maybe look ahead, to far off Spring...

Gray Areas

Raining all day on Sunday I thought I'd set the camera for black and white only, and get some practice in on the world of gray tones, since there wasn't much for color going on anyway...We transported ourselves to a wet and foggy Quabbin Resevoir for a post-lunch walk-around.



Kelly needed to feed the baby before we set out from the car, so I took a quick plunge into the woods nearby looking for stuff to shoot while she took care of business...



Right nearby us was a cool old foundation that I suppose dates back to the pre-flooding era...



...as do some of the gnarlier old trees that had fallen here and there...





By this time Kelly was done feeding baby-girl, and we got the battle stroller set up and rolling in no time.





It's a short walk past a picnic area and down to the water's edge. The reservoir levels are pretty high right now; I've been at this spot before when the water was receded far enough to expose a long wide beach of rocks. I was hoping to be able to step out farther and away from the tree cover for a mega-cool reservoir shot, but it was not to be...



We did luck out heading back up to the car though, when we came upon a family of five or six deer munching at the other side of the meadow we were on...







Kelly headed back to the car with the pea-pod while I tried to carefully inch closer and closer to the now very alert deer, who began themselves inching closer and closer to the nearby woods. I remember reading somewhere that the best way to approach wild animals is to move in a slow, zig-zag, stop and go motion, like a grazing animal would. This takes a lot of patience, at least more than I'm equipped with. So I kind of sped up the process, and soon we were both in the woods, moving, pausing, and staring at each other.



Obviously they were pretty well acclimated to human presence, because I never would have gotten this close to 'wilder' deer outside the Quabbin...



But even these guys had their boundaries, which I apparently crossed; they suddenly leaped away in unison, and disappeared like ghosts into the forest...

To Operate Drop Coin In Slot

It has been exactly one year since my last post about it, so I took a quick run up to Quabbin Reservoir for another look. With it's abundant wildlife, rolling hilly trails and incredible scenery, the reservoir is a photo-taking mecca around these parts.



Anyone who's been here understands how vast a body of water the Quabbin is, and knows the story of the 4 towns that were destroyed to make room for it. I remember bringing a friend up here once who was utterly stunned that such a huge body of water existed in western Massachusetts. He kept shaking his head, saying "I had no idea..", it's the effect the beautiful, 56,000 acre reservoir has on the newcomer.



3,200 foot-high Mount Monadnock in southern New Hampshire looms far off in the distance.



That mountain lends it's name to the word 'monadnock' which is used by geologists to describe any mountain that stands alone. It's an awesome hike, and we're due for another run at it. Maybe in the spring...

The reservoir was created by damming up the Swift River, which is now fed through an outlet at the southern end by the Winsor Dam.



The deep reservoir keeps the Swift river fed with crystal clear, ice cold water; making it one of the prettiest and best trout fishing rivers around. These ducks call it home.



If your patient, and lucky, there's a pretty good chance you'll see a deer.



Deer are rampant in these woods. Hunting them was prohibited for a long time at Quabbin, but had to be reintroduced, with much debate, to ease the over-browsing of the forest which was causing erosion and other problems. Luckily for this guy, we hunt with cameras...

...aaaawwww....



...AAAAAwwwwww....



...AAAAAWWWWWW...!



Quabbin was closing up for there winter hours, at 4:30, but there was just enough time to run up to the lookout tower for a quick look around.



The impressive 84 foot tower, like everything else built at Quabbin, is a solid stone structure from the late thirty's/early forty's. It was closed up for the winter, but access to an enclosed viewing area on top is usually available during the summer. Still, the view at it's base is pretty good too, as it sits on a 1000' hill overlooking the reservoir, and Belchertown in the distance.





Can't let another year go by without returning...