31 Days of Adventure ~ Day 2

Day 2: Notice the little things

It’s often easy to overlook the little things as we go about our days.

Today’s adventure invites you to pause and notice the littlest things: The way the light comes in the window. The rise and fall of your chest as you breath (or maybe the breath of whoever else is in the room.) The patterns made by the trees.

How do the little things add adventure to your day? What have you discovered that you had missed before?

Aspen and Jeffery Pine trees at Spooner Lake

I've been very fortunate to have spent the past 13 days in North Lake Tahoe. Today, being our last full day, the husband and I took a late afternoon trip for one final hike and ended up at Spooner Lake. 

This small and unassuming lake offered a nice 2 miles in which to stretch our legs and, more importantly, allowed for a nice view of a beautiful grove of Aspen. These trees, so haunting in winter, always capture my attention.  I find them so intriguing:

"All of the aspens typically grow in large clonal colonies derived from a single seedling, and spreading by means of root suckers; new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30–40 m (98–130 ft) metres from the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40–150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground. For this reason it is considered to be an indicator of ancient woodlands. One such colony in Utah, given the nickname of "Pando", is estimated to be 80,000 years old, making it possibly the oldest living colony of aspens." ~ Wikipeidia

Awe-inspiring!

Although this diverges from the intent of the Day 2 Prompt I couldn't image posting about anything other than these beautiful tree.  Once you learn of their longevity it becomes impossible to ignore their magnificence.

The husband checking the ice thickness on Spooner Lake