Ireland XI: Forest Fairy

Not too far off from home in Wexford rises Slieve Coilte, the tallest "mountain" in the area by a healthy margin. There's a road to the top, and on a clear day, one can take in a commanding view of the surrounding countryside.

On our various trips to Ireland, I've run up the mountain, a lovely ~12mi roundtrip from home. While running up it this time, I paid more attention to some of the stands of trees (it's part of the grounds of the JFK Arboretum). What's cool about each stand of trees is that they're very homogeneous, and then a couple hundred meters down the road is another stand of different trees, again homogeneous.

As I careened down the mountain this time, the two remaining non-running-related synapses in my brain clanked off each other and made a spark of inspiration, and I vowed to return to the forest with my traveling model.

It was New Years Day before we had reasonable enough weather to go back, and "reasonable enough" was just another way of saying "light drizzle." With d^2 as faithful assistant, we wandered from tree stand to tree stand and let nature be our inspiration.















Even though it may appear that the weather continually improved through these photos, that's not the case. When it started raining hard again, we packed up, ran for the car, and retreated for tea. As you do.

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