Balmy Air, Icy Trails

Nearly 60 degrees today.  Bright blue sky.  Nice day for a hike, right?  Yeah, but only with Yaktrax or microspikes on your boots.  I thought a walk around Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park would be a nice easy way to get my hiking legs back, after a week away from my home woods and mountains.  But just a few steps from my car had me grabbing at tree trunks to keep myself upright.  So back I teetered to get myYaktrax out of the trunk.  Then, the walking was easy, even on the packed icy trail that circles the pond.  

 Mud Pond was still frozen, despite many days of warm temperatures, but a layer of water turned its surface into a mirror, reflecting the sun-warmed, tree-lined shore and a lovely, puffy-cloud azure sky.

These ruffly tree fungi reiterated the blue color-theme today.   With a minutely pored undersurface and alternating hairy and smooth multicolored stripes, this fungus resembles the bracket fungus called Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor), but I have never seen any Turkey Tail colored this blue.  Pretty!
 

Even the moon looked translucently blue today, as if that deep-blue sky were showing through.