A Photo a Week Challenge: The Great Outdoors
We live in rural Massachusetts, but it’s hard to think of it as “the great outdoors.”
There’s something a bit enclosed about New England. Trees and stone fences. No big open areas, but smaller sections. Fields, valleys, rivers, lakes … and an amazing Atlantic coast. We are less grand than the west but cozier. Greener.
Less grand than the west, but friendlier. And we get more than enough snow to make up the difference!
The cows in the meadow
The last of the woods, now bare
Vermont mountains
Roaring dam in Blackstone
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
River Bend in early winter
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong –Winter at home
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Categories: #BlackstoneRiver, #DamsAndWaterfalls, #Photography, New England, Photo A Week Challenge
VIEWING THE RIVER AND CANAL – Garry & Marilyn Armstrong 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Beautiful photos!
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Thanks. It IS the “great outdoors” in a New England sort of way. Not so grand as your mountains or as broad as the deserts in Arizona or as tall as the Rockies, but at least it is all next door. In some cases, it’s part of our grounds.
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I never compare landscapes. They are all amazing. That’s a California lesson. When I first went to San Diego, flying over mountains I would someday live in, I scoffed when a girl across the aisle of the plane told the guy sitting next to her, “Those are my mountains.”
“Mountains? Ha.” I thought. “Hills.”
The rest is history. ❤
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I remember flying low over the Alps and thinking “Those are my dream mountains.” Probably all those readings of Heidi.
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Not sure if I agree with your less friendly and less green conclusion about the west. Even though I am about as North as you can get (excluding Alaska), I am also as far West as you can get (excluding Hawaii) and we are pretty nice and extremely green. 😉
And you are definitely GRAND!!! I hope to see it all in person someday!
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Yeah, we’re pretty friendly out here, and pretty green, but maybe Marilyn is writing about unfriendly landscapes (not people) like the desert Southwest which she and Garry love.
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I didn’t mean that people are unfriendly. Quite the opposite. But you have some mountain ranges — especially as you travel north from Arizona towards Utah and Canada — that are pretty human-hostile. Every time I look at them — awed by their sheer size and solid rockiness — I wonder how people managed to get from here to there and still be alive at the end.
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People have been going through those mountains for tens of thousands of years. There are passes. ❤
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So I hear. But I think I lack sufficient ruggedness.
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I know what you mean, though some passes are sweet little trails. 🙂
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Oh, and by less green, I was being literal. You have bare mountaintops. Even the fir trees are gone up there. That’s some high elevation!
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You live in a beautiful corner of the world.
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We are so deeply green, even my vinyl-sided HOUSE has turned green. And by green, I mean GREEN AND GROWING. This area is half jungle in the summer and normally, when it gets this cold (we’re below zero right now), snowbound. But there’s (so far) no snow. Or at least, no measurable snow. I’m pretty sure that’s going to end in a big hurry in about a week.
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Your snow seems to be getting later each year now.
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Everything is just getting weird.
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It’s certainly great. I so appreciated the landscapes of the country areas after growing up in London and enclosed the buildings.
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It’s a different kind of “great” outdoors. More enclosed with a lot more deciduous trees. That’s why we (usually, but not last year) get so glorious autumn weather. We have maple trees and they are the ones that really give us the color. The oak trees turn golden, but the maples turn scarlet.
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Amazing pictures.
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Thanks. They were (with one exception) all taken within 3 miles of home.
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👍😉
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Great pix, Marilyn.
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I eventually realized I LIVE in the great outdoors — just, in a house.
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Yes.. We bring to our homes what we need most. Lots of life in yours.
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We were watching a show about Frank Lloyd Wright. Garry asked me if I could live in that house and I said I could admire it. Living in it? Not sure about that. It certainly was elegant … but I LIKE walls. Without them, where can you hang pictures?
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In his houses with walls, he made the buyers sign an oath they would put up no art other than that he had chosen and he made yearly instpections! I toured his house in Phoenix, AZ.. a very interesting tour thanks to excellent docents.
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I couldn’t live like that. I need my own version of chaos.
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Also, I think his roofes were pretty flat and that isn’t good for a snow area.
Leslie
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It depends on how strong the roof is, but I notice in this region, his houses did have slanted — not very slanted, but just enough to get the snow to slide off — rooves. He did change design based on topography, although a flat-roof in Toronto seems a bit unwise.
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A flat roof in Toronto is a disaster. Most commercial buildings, shopping malls,all schools and most government buildings have flat roofs. They always leak at some point.
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Can we say we live in “The Big Valley?”
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We live in the Little Valley already.
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