Creek Walks, Year’s End, Surprise Frog, Helpful Cat

Dream Creek

Seeking the last autumn brightness, I looked back at October 2015 pictures. I wanted to feast on prismatic waters and bent sunrays. Instead of posting only December pics here, first we’ll go back to some peak leaf radiance to help us get through winter grays! We’ll check out ‘special effects’ we left out of the last creek post.

Bud in deep editing contemplation

Stopping the presses to thank the editor for his thoughtful and everlasting suggestions. He’s wondering when we’ll get back to all-cat articles. Soon Buddy, soon.

Leafway

One leaf rides high in the float.

Water twists light

Here’s where it gets weird. This is a cropped detail of the water rippling near the opposite bank. What’s lurking there? Only a phenomenon of light and color? I love the multi-color, the flashes of blue, reflected from the sky, riding on the dark shadow spaces. We always think we hear things in the water’s sound. Are we seeing things too? (Yeah I know it’s refraction, the camera picks up stuff the human eye doesn’t see, and mine is set to be a tad extra sensitive to blue. Just having a little fun. Wee woo hoo!)

Currents

The rest of the picture I took the above cropped pic from.

Last of October 2015, blue speckled leaves and pinestraw

The leaves and pine needles are soaked and that moisture reflects the blue of the sky; the deeper water is reflecting the remaining green foliage.

A small tributary, only a part of something much larger

I cropped in closer on this one, intending to examine the mysterious underbank. This was taken right before the picture with all the upper left side color; that’s how fast the light flickers, fades, brightens.

Fading light, mysteries

Going into the corner of this photo, there really are some mysterious, near-spooky shapes gliding around in that water by land’s edge! It’s only shadows …

Pine straw over leaves

Sky and trees actually included

Crimson and vermillion accents

Driven to abstraction by sunken leaves.

Shimmer

Excitement

Becalmed

The view upstream

All this changed by December 19th, when the husband said, “Let’s go to the creek.” I agreed right away. Bad weather was ahead, and we knew we were seeing one of the last warm, calm days.

December 19th long view, creek

Under a shifting, partly cloudy sky, the color scheme is blunted but still retains play.

Frog

Frog, top view

The frog is camped on a mossy flat rock that has become muddy.

Yellow garnish remains

Warm December Day

Last leaves

On December 23 a severe weather watch was projected to last all night and into the next day. That means warm air, with an unsettled feel. Early evening, we watched clouds moving fast in all directions. No one slept much. Everyone stayed on social media late into the night, edgy and restless. There’d been at least one tornado in Mississippi, we knew that much. On December 24th we learned that there had been several, involving many states; one long-track EF4 resulted in deaths, injuries, and shredded homes. Only a few degrees temperature difference in the upper atmosphere, a last minute change, had kept Alabama from having the same factors of tornado-producing turbulence overhead as Mississippi did that night.

So there was a breather on the 24th, and part of the 25th; then another watch was on for the evening and night hours. About the same time we were driving into town, there was an EF0 about five or six miles from our home.  AFAIK so far, it caused only tree damage. Zero doesn’t sound very impressive, but that’s still a 75 mph rotating wind. While on the road I saw a line between dark and light slanting down from sky to ground, but the rest of the sky next to it was darkly cloudy with no defined line on the other side to suggest a vortex. Still … tornadoes are difficult to see in this region. Not long after, an EF2 hit Midfield, Alabama, an area on the outskirts of Birmingham. Thankfully no lives were lost, but many, many homes were heavily damaged and/or destroyed. My Christmas spirit just fizzled away, I have to admit.

High water from the downpours of these weather systems caused terrible flooding over several states. We had no flooding impact, but the few last autumn leaves were no doubt washed down the creek. I haven’t seen it yet. My sustenance comes from nature as is evident from my posts, but there are also times it scares and saddens me.

Photos from the October creek walk are also here:

https://catwoodsporchparty.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/the-heartbreak-light-of-autumn-part-1-the-creek-with-cat/