Back in Familiar Territory

It feels good to be back in more permanent lodging with the ability to ramble around more familiar territory. The routes are all basically the same, and I've largely confined myself to about a ten mile square box for the most part. In fact, most of my rambling probably happens less than two or three miles from home. That's why you all get to see completely contemporary photos that are almost impossible to distinguish from the ones of the same scene taken a week or so ago like this one.

College Creek from today

I'm sure that placed side by side, the last College Creek photo taken from this same bridge would exhibit enough differences to be able to distinguish them from each other, but when I saw this photo I was immediately struck by the similarity to the last one.  To let you compare for yourself, here is the one from about ten or twelve days ago.

College Creek two weeks ago

There you have it. I'm back in familiar territory and covering familiar ground. I do like the fact that the photo from today exhibits a bit more warmth, and that is in keeping with the weather today compared to the last one. It's pretty amazing how the colors are so different when the temperature changes with the light of the sun.

I also managed to capture the almost required view of the sun near the horizon.

Severn River Sunrise

As the sun poked its face over the horizon behind the east bank of the Severn River, I finally encountered the flock of Canada geese that I've been waiting to see this winter. I have not seen the geese in the numbers that I did last year, and I attribute this apparent anomaly to the relatively warm fall and early winter weather. This is the largest gathering that I've seen to date, and I'm left to wonder if they are not the harbinger of some much cooler weather riding the great arctic zephyr out of the north.  We shall see.

Lest  you feel sorry for me in all my sameness, I did see another sort of flock out on the water today that was a bit of a change of pace.

Stand-up Paddleboarders on Spa Creek

This hardy flock of stand-up paddleboarders were clipping along the surface of Spa Creek earlier today. They were really leaning into their paddles and gave every indication that they were pursuing not just good exercise but a race of some sort. Like the geese, this is the largest single flock of this particular species of homo sapiens that I've seen in one location. Perhaps they too were getting in their last strokes before the blowing mist at the front of some 20 degree air drives them from the scene.

It's good to be back.