2021 NH Summer/SH Winter Photo Thread [Spoilers Please!]

Closer view:


A nice meadow


Nice sky at work last week:

The fire looked like it was a bit too hot, as most of the pines had crown damage.


Backcountry riverside campsite


South Fork of the St. Lucie River






Everything looked much lusher than a few weeks ago.




Pond apple were fruiting


Very green


Same spot, February 12

Tons of tarflower blooming


Mesic hammock, on slightly higher ground


Clearing to the west

Mesic flatwoods (slash pine/saw palmetto mainly)


This is more of a wet flatwoods area (with herbaceous species taking the place of saw palmetto).


Largeflower rose gentian (Sabatia grandiflora)


Lower tidal section of Kitching Creek, with red mangroves intermixed with bald cypress.


Everywhere was covered with blooming yellow milkwort (Polygala rugelii)


Small stand of live oaks in the distance marked the boundary between flatwoods and floodplain swamp.


This is one of the largest tracts of protected flatwoods in this part of the state and was selected as an "exemplary site" by the Florida Natural Areas Inventory.


The cypress swamp further upstream on Kitching Creek, with abundant cypress knees.




Beautiful slash pines as far as the eye can see.


Turkey oak (Quercus laevis). Rare in this area, this state park being the only known occurrence in my county.


A faint sun visible on yet another overcast afternoon with little rain.

So I headed out into the woods.


Very wet, it's been a wet June as well as a wet year in general, with a lot of recent rain. If you're out in a forest and you spot puddles like this, that's an indication to grab some mosquito repellant or die pretty much.


I noticed the sky was being very nice looking, so I figured I'd walk to the city lake and watch it from there.


View from the bridge


View from the peninsula the bridge connects to.


Different part of the peninsula.


I sat myself on the rocky headland. Some fishermen were ruining the otherwise mirror-like lake.


The seagulls on that little islet were SO FUCKING LOUD. Like they were fucking screaming their tits off the whole night.


Eventually though the fishermen buggered off.



And as the sunset started to subside at midnight (this image was taken 23:41, an hour before midnight), the cool shape of the clouds became more and more apparent.




Then a group of French students came to watch the sunset. 23.58. They definitely missed the best part though.


The previous pictures all looked a lot darker than it really was due to the simple fact that they were shot against the sunset, and to keep definition in the sky I had to under-expose the images a lot.


In all fairness sake I don't know how true-to-life the exposure on these following images are since I edited them now and don't remember exactly how dark it was, and my phone is very capable, and prone, to making nighttime look like daytime.


Huge myre. Flora was pretty much identical to the sub-alpine landscapes in the Scandes. I even found "dwarf-birch" which is a creeping birch species that I've otherwise only seen at like 600-900m ASL. Also a LOT of cloudberry (although not in season of course, cloudberry season is around August I think). If you're into cloudberry, this definitely seems like a goldmine. I hate the taste of cloudberry though and will not voluntarily go cloudberry picking on my own lol. Those spikey pine-looking things are a type of rhododendron.


Incredibly thick blueberry and lingonberry vegetation.


I found a frog in the tall moss.


Found a very nice passage-way trail. Very red ground.


A clearing with a little creek. Looking to the north (00:22, midnight around 00:40)


And looking to the south. Very idyllic fairy pond vibe.


And the pathway continued. Over a large root lined with a bunch of dead tree stumps, as if a large wall of trees had been growing out of one large root. Very weird. I assume it's man-made, but if it's not, then it's incredibly cool. Looked pretty much like a fence towards that other end.


And this is the magic of the bright nights here. Not often you can stand in the middle of one of the main roads, the E4, in almost daylight, without a single car to be found. Feels very surreal in a wonderful way.

And I managed to find a small closed off road mainly used by horses it seems, leading towards the backside of the airport.


Managed to find a very oddly abandoned cabin.




Eventually I managed to get to the airport fence, in view of the weather station. Here's the wind station. No idea what the other instruments are though.


And about 50m away was what I assume to be the temperature sensor and other weather equipment.


I tried to walk alongside the airport fence for fun, but I was swarmed by more mosquitoes than I've ever seen in my life. Eventually I literally had to RUN away from them, despite having put high-effectivity DEET mosquito spray all over my face, neck, hands and even hair. Like it was insane. Airport air defence.


There were a bunch of very weird monocultural tree farms alongside the airport.


There was one with only pines as well. They were pretty short despite looking relatively mature/old. Some broadleaf trees had managed to invade though. Looked pretty nice tbh.


This kinda felt illegal for some reason, even though I know I didn't break any laws. Overview of the airport. Weather station can be seen to the right. While I was taking these images a fallow deer walked up really close before noticing me and darting away. Didn't manage to catch any photos of it though.