Winter Trees

Row of birches in a city parking strip

“I had been walking alone in the winter woods my entire life and never found them without surprise, joy or inspiration. . . The experience of the woods in winter is almost entirely visual:  shadow and sunlight; tree trunks turned black, gray and white, some of them smooth as suede, others rough as oyster shells.  The light is everything, turning ice-tipped branches into ornaments and the quartz caught in granite boulders into pink jewels.  I stopped from time to time to absorb the silence.  The winter woods are nearly always silent.  There may be the muffled woof of snow falling from the burdened bough of a spruce tree or the isolated chatter of chickadees as they search among the softwood for seeds, but usually the only sound is the rasp of one’s own breathing.”
– Lou Ureneck, Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine

I find city trees just as much a visual treat as those in a winter woods described above.  The variances in the bark — colors and textures — is amazing.  Here are a few photos from a recent walk in north Seattle:

Weathered maple keys look like moth wings

Curling bark

The healed knot from a lost branch

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