Its been too long since I have gotten out for a good hike, and this winter has been too long. With this last snowstorm that blew through New York it feels like winter will never end despite spring being just around the corner. The only thing that makes it any better is that after this snow storm I was able to get out to one of my favorite places and experience what the storm left us.

Tangelwood Nature Center is one of my favorite places to go to just be out in nature. It provides some of the most beautiful scenery in our area. I never seem to find my way there frequently enough. Today I went there to hike through the snow and enjoy being alive and being outside. Being that I am both a nature lover and a photographer I brought cameras.

I wanted to not only hike around and breath the fresh are and experience the wonders of nature I wanted to try to capture some images that I could share with everyone. There are so many different reasons I love Tanglewood and that means in order for me to capture everything I want in one trip I need a variety of equipment. To capture the full scenic view that is Tanglewood I brought my Nikon 1 J5 mirror-less camera with the wide angle zoom 10-30 mm lens. I also like to try and isolate certain elements of the scene from others. For that purpose I brought my Nikon 50 mm f1.8 lens on my Nikon D300 DSLR camera body. Then perhaps my favorite aspect of Tanglewood is the wildlife, particularly birds. For that I used my Nikon 300 mm f4 lens with the 1.4 teleconverter on my Nikon D500 DSLR camera body. With that gear I set off.

The snow was deeper than I expected and it was warmer than I was expecting. I was fine while I was standing still photographing some bluebirds. But with the sun out and shining I quickly heated up as I trudged through the deep snow. The deep snow and recent cold weather had me thinking I needed to bundled up. Turns out I was overdressed. But, too warm is better than too cold I guess.

There had been people there prior to my visit cross country skiing. I started off staying on their tracks. It made the hiking a little bit easier. Eventually as the ski tracks became more frozen and hard it was just easier to hike through the fresh snow. I don’t care who you are but it is one of the coolest feelings to be the first one to put tracks into virgin snow. The snow had drifted and was quite deep in places. it was up to my knee as I sunk in at times, but the varying depth was another challenge because you never knew what the next step was going to be lie. I went from sections of deep snow over my knee to a patch where I could see grass in just a short series of steps. When I was in areas of open field I couldn’t even tell where the actual trail was supposed to be, so I just did my best.

I just hiked around on some of the more open trails closer to the main complex. I didn’t get down into the woods. I was so happy to just get out and enjoy the day. No real plan, just be outside, do something, and enjoy.