Journeys›Photograph

An October Walk by the Lake Near Home

·Nevada County, California·#hiking#tahoe#dog#autumn#landscape
A mountain lake with golden autumn trees, dark forests, and distant peaks with ski runs, under a partly cloudy sky.

Walked the lake near home with the dog this morning. October is the month for fall color in this county — down toward Nevada City it's the big leaf maples and black oaks doing the work, but up here it's willows, and they were holding up their end, yellow all around the shore and grown in thick enough that getting to the water meant pushing through.

Snow already sitting on the ski runs across the valley, thin white stripes down the cut slopes. Clouds kept coming through in shifts, so it went from bright to gray and back a few times over the loop.

The route out crossed the sagebrush flat first, all rock and dry brush, and the dog kept his nose down through most of it. At the water he planted himself in the wet grass right at the edge and stayed there a while. One bird out in the middle, too far to tell what it was. The rushes were standing in a few inches of water past where the shoreline usually sits.

A wide shot of a lake with golden bushes in the foreground, a pine forest, snow-capped mountains, and a cloudy sky.Autumn landscape with a lake, yellow foliage, evergreen forests, and snow-capped mountains under a partly cloudy sky.A pond in an autumn landscape with yellow bushes, rolling hills, evergreen forests, and distant mountains under a cloudy blue sky.A tan dog walks on a dirt trail through dry brush under a bright blue, cloudy sky, with distant snowy mountains.A vast landscape with dry, brush-covered fields, forested mountains, and distant snow-capped peaks under a cloudy blue sky.A light brown dog lies in tall, yellowish-green grass, looking up towards a body of water.A lake with golden-leaved bushes in the foreground, backed by pine tree-covered mountains under a cloudy blue sky.A lake with yellow bushes along the banks, a dense evergreen forest, and mountains under a partly cloudy sky.

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