Photo Friday: The Gray Tree

I haven’t been up into the mountains in ages.  For weeks now, I’ve been thinking that I needed to go, but to be honest, I needed an excuse to do it.  My brother proved to be that excuse.

In for just a week, I wanted to do something special during his visit, which just happened to coincide with my birthday last Tuesday.  Since my mom could not get off from work on Tuesday, I asked for Wednesday off and up into the mountains we went.

I was hoping for some fall foliage but alas, it was too late in the year.  Still, I took one of the routes that people take when they’re looking for golden Aspens – Evergreen Parkway to HWY 104 and round the back way to Echo Lake.  I’ll be sharing a lot of those pics in the next few weeks, but I wanted to start with some closeups of interesting things that caught my eye.

It was late in the day and I was itching to wander down a path to see where it would take me.  My mom was just looking for a place to go to the bathroom.  I looked to my left and saw one of those National Park bathroom places, so I cut across the road, parked, and then went wandering.  I came across a curious tree.  One side was ashen gray, skin cracked with deep grooves.  The other side looked fairly normal except for little areas that looked…chewed on.

Really odd.

I took these pictures:

The other side had areas with this odd texture:

I wondered if it had been struck by lightning and burned, or if someone had set it on fire, or if it had frozen – maybe some combination of all of the above.  I’ll never know for sure.

In a sea of evergreens, this tree stood out to me, surrounded by a light dusting of snow, full of mystery and an odd beauty.

~P