I viewed many great sites at Stone Valley but this was my favorite. I snowshoed up a rock cliff that looked down into this rapid gorge, which was a wonderful site. The image really gives you a sense of how much snow the North Country receives, and the opening where you can see the water is just breathtaking. It was a lot of fun hiking up to this point because you had to walk across the ice over the river to get to it. This is just one of Stone Valleys many gorges, rapids and chutes.

In this primarily hemlock-beech forest I discovered an Ash tree with a long scar running down the length of the trunk. I figured that this would be a good display of tree growth and how they adapt to life in the North country. I took a shot facing the sky in order to give you a better perspective of how long the scar was and so you could see it twist up the tree. It also captures the intricate pattern of the bark.

I thought this would be a beautiful image as we skied across this frozen pond. It seemed to be a large wetland area stretching about 150 feet across. The bright sunlight and the glistening of the snow on the ice made for the perfect opportunity to score a nice picture. It really made me want to go ice skating!

Along this heavily wooded trail at Higley Flow, I stopped to take in the beautiful scenery of the magnificent hardwoods. The evening was very placid as we were cross country skiing through the woods. What drew my attention to this image was the image of the sun and its rays beaming through the trees without a cloud in the sky. Higley Flow provides a lot of fun recreational opportunities in the summertime and especially during winter where you can never go wrong.

This morning I was setting gates for a race at Gore Mountain. I was already on the lift before the sun rose and I was able to get a great shot of the sun peering over the mountains as we set gates on Echo. Living the Adirondacks has been an incredible experience, I have had great work opportunities and living in nature has been invaluable. In a time when we face a potentially life changing environmental disaster I think it is important to enjoy things like skiing and outdoor play in the winter while it is still available to us.

On the bank of the of the Grass River I found these two cedar trees making an excellent frame. The Cedar is an incredibly resilient tree, they can grow anywhere including out of the sides of cliff faces like blue ledges on the Hudson River Gorge. One of my many non-deciduous conifers the cedar keeps its leaves in the winter in the form of needles despite the potential for sustained water loss through stomata on the needles.

This photo depicts one of the first Ice Sheet melts of the year on a warm day in early February. The early melt is the beginning of a long thaw and the tail end of a long cold winter. For wildlife this means more readily available water, but it also means a quickly depleting subnivean zone which, serves as great shelter from predators in the winter.

The is a photo of motion. The water flowing over the rocks to me represents the emergence of life at the tail end of a long winter. The natural frame of the photo moves the viewers eye toward the overflow. During the spring this must be one monster hydraulic.

I took this photo in dried river bed on the Grass River. It strikes me because of the natural frame and the lighting caused by the ice sheet. The time of year when I took this photo it is rare to find shallow moving water like this, but when it is available it serves as a steady source of water for nearby animals before the spring comes and the river fills with snow melt and once again turns into a moving metropolis of biodiversity.

Our Natural History class took a class trip to the wild center in Tupper lake, Ny. After our walk inside we took a walk on the beautiful 31 acre trail. This trail had a number of different tree species as well as animal tracks. The view of the lake was beautiful. The lake was frozen and beautiful. This picture is very interesting to me because it captures a essence of beauty. It shows the true width of this lake as well as the misty north country sky in the background.