This time along the Appalachian Trail by the side of the Housatonic River, north out of Kent.
The snow was mostly gone, although – as is the way with micro-climates – there were patches glazed with ice and slick with melting snow. But mostly it was soggy and brown with leaves.
The going was easy in spite of a sockful of icy water from fording a swollen rill without a split log bridge.
At Stoney Brook a lunch break was accompanied by a pileated woodpecker – its hammering silenced by the rush of the river and the brook tumbling over boulders.
