Late Fall Drive…
This year I have driven back and forth across Ontario more times than in any other year…I have been crisscrossing the province via a number of different routes…I realized on one of my last trips across that I had never done it at that time of year before (October 24th)…so I was seeing things that I have never seen before…most spectacular were the tamarack trees in their full fall glory…
On the route that I was driving, most of the leaves from the deciduous trees had fallen by this time…the height of the fall colours having passed a couple of weeks prior…I was driving across the province then as well, but couldn’t stop because of time restrictions…I did take a couple pictures of the beautiful fall colours...taken out of the van window as I drove…but wasn’t able to stop and photograph...
I left Ottawa on that Saturday morning, a few weeks ago, in the misty rain…it was really quite beautiful even so…there was a lot of ground fog…so lakes were mostly soft grey blurs, revealing only the outcroppings of trees and rock close to the road…the rest of the scene strangely missing in the foggy haze…swamps meandered, snaking back and forth between the landscape forms, disappearing into the mist…the dead trees showing as stark black lines against the muted golds and browns of the dying grasses…the water reflecting back varying tones of grey…the mostly leafless birch added their bright white highlights to play against the beautiful, rich dark greens of the pines…then the shock of the yellow tamaracks…
I wanted to stop so many times…but I wasn’t set up for photographing in the rain…and while beautiful in real life, my simple camera would not have been able to catch the subtleties of the colours and the light…the depth and mysteriousness of the landscape would have been lost…
I drove along in awe…relishing the fleeting sneak peeks at mostly hidden lakes and swamps that disappeared around the outcroppings of rocks and the stands of trees…the back roads that I take to get from Ottawa to near Midland or to the cottage are so magical…Ontario is such a beautiful province…
When I reached LT’s, there were still some deciduous trees with their leaves still clinging…we walked the dogs on some paths near her house...part of the network of the Simcoe Forest County Trails…it was a beautiful world in bright yellow…looking up into the trees…and the path blanketed with leaves…
I would love to, someday, do a number of photography trips through the back roads of Ontario...so that i could concentrate on the photography and not just snap pictures as I fly by…I would have to go a number of times...in the different seasons…I have since bought myself a couple of really good back road map books…that was how Cariño and I ended up at the ghost town of Balaclava…
2 comments:
Lovely photos. I especially like the one with the two yellow leafed trees and the sky showing between them. Wow!
Gorgeous. You should think about giving photography lessons.
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