The Pine Forest

(It's like no other pine forest I've ever seen.)

No pine forest like a straight line forest.

About three, maybe, five minutes outside of Armidale on the previously-unvisited northeast side, there is the Armidale State Park Pine Forest. We drove up there last Sunday to have a little walk; it was more nostalgia for the mountains than I've felt in a while.  The sandy, slippery feeling of walking on layers of pine needles, the smell, the cool air and the burning hot sun.

Most interesting, however, was this little grove of nearly dead unknown deciduous trees.  It seems probable that this land used to be a farm and this was an orchard, but we didn't know what kind of orchard it could be.  The trees had thorns--perhaps some wild plums?  Unfortunately, there wasn't any information about this particular place in the park on the bulletin board at the entrance.

Something about it was a bit eerie, but also somehow rather beautiful.