Spotted this while waiting for my ride home last night… I’m not sure what kind of tree this is… I think it’s some kind of spruce. Anyway, I love the strange blue tint to the outer needles.
I played bass in high school. I’ve still got both my upright, acoustic bass and my electric in the music nook upstairs, so I could get back into practice at any time if I needed to. Really.
Anyway, I played bass for a couple shows put on by the Marquette Male Chorus when growing up, including one show that was up in Houghton. Driving back from that show, late at night in the woods of Michigan’s U.P. was an eerie experience. The sky was completely clear and the moonlight was incredibly bright. The trees by the side of the road had the same sort of blue color on their outer needles, fading in to a dark green near the trunk of the tree.
About half way back home, literally in the middle of nowhere, a strange black shape started following the car I was riding in. We were doing a comfortable 45 MPH on one of the county roads, and it kept pace with us for at least a mile. When it came out of a gap in the woods, we could see that it was a black bear.
It ran with a sort of fluid bunching and extending motion, like a cat. A three hundred pound cat capable of highway speeds. Once it got a good look at us, it seemed to lose interest and broke off the chase, but it’s still one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.
Anyway, the blue pine needles reminded me of it. Nice aren’t they?