The ground cover is littered with brown; brown fallen leaves, brown twigs, and brown dirt.  The closer I look I see specks of green popping up, to my left there are small sprouts peeping up between the different shades of brown.  To my right, sits a bed of moss, completely content to be providing the eye something to catch onto as it wanders the landscape. The closer I inspected the landscape I saw that there was more than just shades of brown but oranges as well. Looking up into the nearby tree I could see many orange leaves fluttering in and out of the sunlight, these leaves were sporadic amongst their branches, almost as afraid to stay too close to on  another. Once noticing the orange leaves on the tree I started a scavenger hunt with myself to try and find them amongst the rest of the dead leaves on the ground.  While the orange leaves were few and far between they were present and once they caught my eye I felt a piece of satisfaction as completing amongst my little game. As my eye continued to wander searching desperately for something that had any other color it settled upon a small patch of snow.

This patch of snow was settled upon the base of a tree that extended outward toward the water.  It’s closeness to the water is presumably what has allowed it to hold on to its last stage before melting in the 60 degree weather we were experiencing that day. The snow was crisp on its base layer but surrounded by a layer of moisture making it so you could almost see through the individual flakes.  It felt that if I had sat there for the rest of the day it would have been possible for me to witness the entire snow patch disappear.  But in the small period of time I was observing it I was unable to see much change. With the warm temperature and sun it was inevitable if I were to come back in the evening this little patch that had been hanging on for dear life, would have completely disappeared.

It soon became difficult to focus on the landscape as two geese floated down the river and then stopped directly in my line of sight. One of the geese pulled over and stood upon the small exposed patch of dirt that created an island for the geese. The other goose continued to move with the flow of the stream, but every so often had to swim backup to stay close to its companion (is there any way to know if they are friends or mates, I am unsure).  The goose that remained in the water appeared to be giving itself a bath, continually splashing its feathers in the water creating larges ripple effects, and causing the other goose to squak, seemingly annoyed at the bathing goose.  The goose atop the island would switch from standing to sitting all while waiting for the goose to finish its bath.  This bath took much longer than anticipated perhaps due to the current that kept dragging it down stream.

These geese seemed to be at peace with themselves until a set of 2 more geese arrived. This started a squall of geese honking back and forth, as if they were yelling at each other,  claiming their territory as the newly arrived geese continued to float downstream.  All of this geese honking came at quite an unfortunate time, as I was sitting observing the actions of these geese, you could hear a woodpecker working in a nearby tree, tap, tap, tap, tap in rapid succession, a long pause, and then again tap, tap, tap, tap.  This tapping was accompanied by a Blue Jay, creating a melody with the flowing water, rustling leaves and splashing goose.