When you go hiking in the rain

with the science team in the Catskills, it's hard to take pictures for fear of ruining your camera in the rain and because it's buried in a tubberware in your knapsack under your poncho and a bit awkward to get. I missed getting a shot of the beautiful bark of two native species found in the northeast on slopes like the one we climbed to Giant Ledge; Acer pensylvanicum (Moose Maple or Striped Maple) and Betula alleghaniensis (Yellow Birch). The trips in the field with science team are immersion lessons in botanical names and plants, and joke-telling on the trail. It's also just nice to spend a whole day dedicated to learning by observing plants as they are, uncultivated and in their native habitat (some, not all), and to just go for a walk in the woods up a rocky trail. Tomorrow we go back to cultivation and civilization and by that I mean, of course, probably weeding.