Tag: nature

#AtoZChallenge | M is for Mist and a Magical Transformation

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Winter mist is probably my favorite winter scene. It arrives unexpectedly and makes everything it touches eerie and surreal.

“Mist is tiny droplets of water hanging in the air. These droplets form when warmer water in the air is rapidly cooled, causing it to change from invisible gas to tiny visible water droplets.”1

When the conditions are right, it creates a magical landscape. It also has this amazing way of draining color from the scene. All my photos in this post are color but the mist seems to wash most of the color away leaving behind unsaturated wondrous images.

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#AtoZChallenge | H is for Hidden Under the Snow

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As I was going through all of my winter pictures to decide what I wanted to including in my posts for this A to Z challenge, I started coming across a number of pictures of things partially hidden by mounds of snow and slowly a thought for H came into focus.

We try to bring things inside before the more intense winter weather hits but inevitably each year there are a few items that either by intention, or a lack of time, stay outside and have to brave the elements.  As winter progresses, they start to get more and more hidden by the snow.

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#AtoZChallenge | F is for Four Winter Hikes and Extra Points in Scattegories

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One of my favorite cold weather activities is hiking. Fortunately, we have an abundance of trails in Maine but I don’t always blog about every hike that we take. So, for today’s challenge post, I’m sharing pictures from four different hikes we took this past winter.

Have you ever played Scattegories? It’s one of my favorite games. The basic premise is that you roll a letter dice, and then you have to think of words that begin with that letter for various categories . If you come up with multiple words that start with that letter for a category, you get extra points. This post gets extra points since the name of three of the four trails that we hiked also begin with the letter F.

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#AtoZChallenge | E is for the Eastern Prom and Staying Active

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The Eastern Prom in Portland is usually full of activity and the host to many community events but on a cold winter day I ventured down to this waterfront location and captured a few quieter winter moments. The park was empty and isolated but the views were still spectacular.

While the park was deserted, the snowman standing guard among the playground equipment and the many pairs of footprints frozen into the snow underneath the swing set showed that even in the winter the park still gets plenty of little visitors. According to an article in the Portland Press Herald, the Eastern Promenade is also a great spot for sledding that doesn’t seem to draw the crowds of some other locations, but offers a great hill with amazing views.1

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#AtoZChallenge | C is for a Coastal Hike at Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park

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Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park is a gorgeous coastal hike. It’s my favorite type of trail. After hiking through the forest, you take a short passage down to the ocean’s edge and emerge onto stunning coastal views.

We did this hike as winter was winding down last year, so the snow was manageable as we hiked through the forest, although we did still need our crampons. When the weather starts warming up,  you need to be extra cautious about ice. Since there is a lot of melting and refreezing happening at this time of year, there can be some hidden slick spots.

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