On this spring equinox morning a huge sun, filtered by morning clouds, hangs over East Hill and Cornell University. Taken from our home on West Hill, looking across the valley and Ithaca, New York.
The temperature is a balmy 18 degrees F.
Can you pick out these Cornell landmarks?
— Jenny McGraw Tower
— Lib Slope still covered in snow from last week’s storm.
— the looming fortress shape of Bradford Hall.
Up East Hill
Today a large fox devoured a squirrel on our front lawn while I wrote this post. Further up Green Street is this mural, I do not find an attribution and assume it is from 2020.
Continuing past all the new development in downtown Ithaca, I head up the steep sidewalk up east hill on Seneca Street, named for the Iroquois Confederacy tribe of the westernmost lands. Here is a flowering tree with attractive red haws growing on the corner of Seneca Street and Schuyler Place.
From the doorway of the former Henry W. Sage mansion at 603 E. Seneca St designed by William Henry Miller in1876. Today, it is broken into six apartments. This is the Sage of Cornell University Sage Chapel. Henry Sage was a supporter of admitting women to Cornell to the extent of donating $250,000 around the year 1870.
206 North Quarry Street, the northwest corner of Seneca and Quarry. It, too, once a single family home now broken into apartments.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Former farm land
Sandbank Road climbs from the valley of Ithaca city to the rural peneplain on the way to Buttermilk Falls, we passed the sign for this preserve many times, today we explored this place, new to us. The trail descends to Lick Creek canyon.
We stopped to enjoy the open space of a powerline clear cut where the trail intersects the creek bed. Here we turned, following the water.
Off trail to the creek bed.
Summer View with Clouds
Travel to Fillmore Glen from our former home included a climb to an overlook of the Fall Creek valley, seen here on a summer afternoon in four parts.
Three exposures using a 50 mm Canon lens on a Kodak dslr. A tripod allowed me good orientation and, later, to use the Photoshop photoMerge feature to combine exposures into a panorama. At that time, I was limited to the 50 mm lens.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A Waterfall with this unusual name.
The gorge takes a turn here to face the west, where I caught the late afternoon sun lowering in these three shots in close sequence.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Anticipating Our Tenth Wedding Anniversary
After work on a 2008 Friday afternoon in October we sped over to Beebee Lake on the Cornell University Campus to catch the late afternoon glow……
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Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A place of myth and wonder on foot and approachable
A May Morning, Early
Every photograph from my recent posting were accepted by Getty IStock. Click this link to visit the photographs on IStock.
The tenacity of Ironweed resonates with the human spirit.
A lone sprig of Ironweed hangs on from a cliff edge moss carpet off the South Rim Trail, Taughannock Falls New York State Park, Finger Lakes Region.
Northern Latitude
Early November on Gorge Road, Finger Lakes Region, New York State. At this month and latitude (42 north) there are long shadows throughout the day. The South Rim Trail of Taughannock Falls State Park briefly emerges from the wooded cliff to this portion of the road that parallels the gorge, descending to Cayuga Lake shores.
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 