Fall foliage - including a red bra!

On October 21st Finn and I spent another morning on the slopes of Brundage, enjoying the crisp autumn air and foliage. Please - enjoy it with us:

Mountain blueberry shrubs turning red.

Tamarack starting to yellow on the left; evergreen on the right.

The tamaracks - or larches, as I'm used to calling them - are starting their autumn transition from green to yellow before dropping their needles altogether. When looking at the forest from a distance, one sees pockets of yellow within the expansive green - tamaracks, or aspens. It's lovely.

Finn poses on quirky tree stump.

More aspen.

Can you tell I'm a western Washington girl who has felt deprived of aspen most of her life? I never tire of seeing these trees - growing in clusters derived from one mother tree; white bark; green leaves all summer that shimmy and shine in the breeze, then add zest and zing to autumn as they slowly dance through their color range of yellow, orange, red and finally black, ultimately resting on the ground, adding back nutrients to the soil so that the cycle can repeat again.

Finn in more blueberry shrubs.

Tamaracks contrasting with lodgepole pines, other evergreens.

The Irish Finn MacCool needs his drink - in his case, wild water.

On this particular morning Finn and I were scouting an area we don't usually travel, lower on the mountain. I was checking to see if it might have easy trails for the girls. It does, and you'll see in an upcoming post photos of Meadow enjoying herself here. But what was most memorable about this outing was the following odd item that caught my eye, up high in some aspens:

What's that up in the tree?

A red bra! Must be a Triple D!

At first I thought it was a bird's nest. Then I noticed it was red. Then, getting closer...it's a bra! What the heck...? It's so high off the ground, it would be near impossible to toss it up there. Then I noticed that a ski lift ran near by. Hmm. Some sort of wintertime disrobing-while-on-the-ski-lift scenario? Brrrr.


I posted the photo on my Facebook page. A friend noted that at many ski areas, it's an end-of-season ritual to strip off clothing.


Go figure.