Gloomy morning

Not taken this morning 

I’m not used to mornings being as dark as it was this morning, though in a few days time I’m going to have to get used to it.  This morning darkness wasn’t caused by the impending time change or by me getting up earlier than usual.  The sky was overcast and the clouds low, almost misty. The effect made the morning as dark as night. Even at 7 a.m. I needed a headlamp when I went to feed the chickens.

Likely the extra dark morning is why I didn’t hear a peep or see any forest dwellers other than Doodle, my rooster, this morning.  Baby Dog and I took our usual walk, and even the headlamp didn’t help much.  I kept remembering Robert Jordan’s description of “the Ways” in his Wheel of Time series, an underground passage where light didn’t penetrate and travelers who got too far behind the leader never found their way out.  That’s what this morning felt like.  The darkness seemed to gobble up the light from my lamp and didn’t illuminate but a few feet in any direction.  Even Baby Dog seemed subdued and hung by my heels more than she usually does. This kind of darkness is a far cry from a clear night’s darkness that is hung with familiar stars overhead to keep me company and guide my way.

October is soon coming to an end, and with it the last of the leaves will fall.  When I’m not encircled by clouds, I can see, barely, portions of the slope of Nell’s Hill to the west of my cabin.  I can see it clearly all summer whenever I walk out of the woods and onto the abandoned ski slope, but 50 yards or so of forest separates it from my view during the leafy seasons. Even after the leaves fall, the view is striped by tree trunks but that seems a minor veiling.  Certainly, it’s nothing compared with the gloomy gray blanket that covered the mountain this morning.

On a dark and dreary morning...

Today might be the last “good” day for autumn leaves here on Roundtop. Partly, it’s just time for the leaves to fall. Partly, it’s that weather system that’s due to arrive tonight. Put together wind and leaves ready to fall and that ends up with leaves fallen and on the ground. Or so I suspect will be how the morning greets me tomorrow.

So this morning, in the darkness of the pre-dawn hour, amid the gloom of a drizzle, I am out trying to get a few last leaf photos. The light wasn’t very good, but it won’t be very good all day, so I was stuck with what there was. That’s just the way it is.

The time change isn’t for another 12 days or so, and I will just have to put up with dark mornings until that happens. At this point, I pretty much wake up the chickens to feed them before I leave for work. They don’t mind being awakened, but they don’t see well in the darkness, and almost any motion scares them. Something like moving the feed dish or plunking down the water bottle, neither of which fazes them in the least in daylight, suddenly is a scary thing.

Worst of all about the morning darkness for me is that I don’t get to see the feeder birds that empty my bird feeders. It’s too dark now even for the crows, those early risers of the colder months. I’ve thought of putting in a birdcam but then I’d probably never get any work done. And there’s also the matter of reporting. Can I report a bird species I see only on my webcam? I suspect not, and that would make me crazy if the redpolls or the siskins or the crossbills showed up. Better I simply not know they were there.

Today's photo shows the lane up to my cabin.  It's prettier in sunlight.