分类必应美图下的文章

亨茨维尔附近绿色山公园中的Cambron Covered Bridge，阿拉巴马州 Cambron Covered Bridge in Green Mountain Park, near Huntsville, Alabama (© Jens Lambert/Shutterstock)

A bridge of Madison County

Framed here for the season by fall foliage, the Cambron Covered Bridge is located along a nature trail in Green Mountain Park in Madison County, *Alabama*—not Iowa, which is the setting of the bestselling romance novel 'The Bridges of Madison County.' It's believed there were once about 14,000 covered bridges in the US, but fewer than 900 or so remain today, a quarter of which can be found in Pennsylvania. But Alabama has covered-bridge bragging rights, too. The state has 11 historic covered bridges. Built in 1974, the Cambron Covered Bridge doesn't make the official 'historic' list, but it does offer hikers a peaceful passageway with great views of Sky Lake.

科夫堡，英国多塞特 Corfe Castle, Dorset, England (© Ross Hoddinott/Minden Pictures)

Creepy Corfe Castle

Spying the crooked silhouette of Corfe Castle above the rolling, foggy hills of Dorset, you might not guess at the ruin's former palatial beauty—you'll more likely sense its long history of intrigue, and maybe feel a chill down your spine.

Corfe's tale begins with a betrayal. Rumor has it this mound is where the teenage King Edward the Martyr was assassinated, likely by his half-brother and successor Æthelred the Unready, in 978—a century before the original stone structure was built. The castle became a favorite of 13th-century ruler King John—whose luxurious renovations hid a feared dungeon where the calculating monarch starved numerous prisoners. In the mid-1600s English Civil War, noblewoman Mary Bankes—wife of the castle's new lord, who was off fighting the war—doggedly defended it against antiroyalist forces in a 3-year siege. But Mary was given up by members of her entourage and captured, and the castle was toppled into the craggy heap you see now—another betrayal to end its story.

Nowadays the remains of Corfe Castle are preserved as a Scheduled Ancient Monument by the UK—but that status might not be all that's protecting the site. Reports of children's sobs echoing through the air, unexplained flickering lights, and—most notoriously—the headless apparition of a white-clad woman have some believing specters of a millennium past still haunt the ruin.

不列颠哥伦比亚省的一块南瓜田，加拿大 A pumpkin patch in British Columbia, Canada (© James Chen/Shutterstock)

A most sincere pumpkin patch

Ah, the perennial pumpkin patch. You might think the round orange gourds in today's photo are vegetables, but botanists say pumpkins are actually the fruit of pumpkin vines. They're considered fruit because pumpkins contain seeds and grow from the same part of the plant that produces flowers. And now, as Halloween nears, pumpkins are ripe for picking and carving into spooky jack-o'-lanterns.

The jack-o'-lantern tradition dates to mid-1800s Ireland when people carved faces into potatoes or turnips to ward off evil spirits. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to North America, only to discover that native pumpkins were much easier to carve. Fast-speed ahead and we're just grateful that pumpkins are the seasonal 'fruit' of choice since turnips would make a questionable spiced-latte drink.

纽约市的天际线与联合国总部大楼 New York City skyline with United Nations headquarters (© Sean Pavone/Alamy)

75 years of the United Nations

We're looking at the New York City skyline with the UN's headquarters in the middle for United Nations Day, marking the anniversary of the date when the UN Charter entered into force. This year is a milestone 75th anniversary of the United Nations, which replaced the League of Nations as the world's largest and most powerful intergovernmental organization. To mark the occasion, the UN launched its UN75 global dialogue initiative in January, and discussions have taken place around the world in settings ranging from classrooms to the UN General Assembly. COVID-19 has made some of these events a logistical challenge, but it's also highlighted the need for countries to work together to face global issues. The UN website allows anyone to participate, with toolkits for dialogue, issues briefs, and other resources.

Bents的旧百货商店，加拿大萨斯喀彻温省 Old general store of Bents, Saskatchewan, Canada (© ImagineGolf/Getty Images)

Saskatchewan's spookier side

If you're greeted by a friendly face and a warm 'Welcome to Bents' as you stroll up to this old general store, you might be having a paranormal experience: It's been 50 years since a living soul dwelt in this Saskatchewan ghost town.

Built along one of the last spurs of track laid during central Canada's early-20th-century railroad boom, Bents didn't attract many residents before it quickly declined in the 1920s, when droughts stymied the region's wheat crop. By the '60s even the last hangers-on were gone, leaving only the shells of the store, grain elevator, and a few other assorted buildings. Plus of course any spirits who, nostalgic for the outpost's short-lived heyday, might still call it a favorite haunt.

Lauwersmeer国家公园上空的椋鸟群，荷兰 Starlings flock over Lauwersmeer National Park, Netherlands (© Frans Lemmens/Alamy)

Moving as one

After the nesting and breeding seasons of spring and summer have passed, starlings become highly social birds, often gathering in flocks that number in the thousands. These flocks sometimes take the form of a murmuration—when the birds form a group large and dense enough that they appear to move together as a single organism, even if the movements seem arbitrary. Though scientists still don't quite understand how the individual starlings in a murmuration coordinate their tight, fluid formations, the behavior is thought to be a way to confuse predators.

Imagine if you're a falcon on the hunt and you see a small group of starlings—an easy meal if you catch one. But if the starlings spot the predator first, they may form a murmuration, swooping and diving as one, making it difficult for the falcon to isolate and hunt an individual starling.

比弗湖自然中心内光秃秃的树和红盖鳞毛蕨，纽约 Bare trees and autumn ferns in Beaver Lake Nature Center, New York (© Chris Murray/Alamy)

Reflecting on fall

Some of the best things about fall in many parts of the country are the amazing colorful displays across the landscape. While the trees here in Beaver Lake Nature Center, near Syracuse, New York, are already bare, the autumn ferns here cast a radiant reflection on the water. This 661-acre natural area contains a 200-acre glacial lake that draws migrating Canadian geese to its shores. Visitors may also see more than 200 species of other birds and over 800 varieties of plants. The nature center is also a destination for cross-country skiing in the winter, as well as kayaking and canoeing in the summer months.

马蹄寺风景区内的马蹄寺和石窟，中国甘肃省 The Mati Si (Horse's Hoof Temple) and grottoes of Mati Si Scenic Area, Gansu province, China (© Ana Flašker/Alamy)

A cliff-hanging complex of temples

Feast your eyes on the colorful Mati Si (Horse's Hoof Temple) and its cliffside complex of sandstone grottoes and wooden pavilions. To understand the mythical origin of the Horse's Hoof Temple, you have to squint your eyes a bit. Then you might be able to see the hoof marks left by a frightened longma, the fabled winged dragon horse that purportedly landed here thousands of years ago. What you can't see is the claustrophobic network of tunnels connecting the seven floors and seven grottoes to the Mati Si pagoda, which itself is 200 feet high and holds hundreds of Buddha statues.

Mati Si lies within the grasslands of China's Gansu province along the Hexi Corridor of what was once China's Northern Silk Road. There's no bus service to the temple so you'll have to grab a taxi or, like the mythical dragon horse that left its imprint here, hoof it.

Sitka shines on Alaska Day

In honor of Alaska Day, we're in the harbor of Sitka, Alaska, the former capital of Russian America in the early 19th century, when it was called Novo-Arkhangelsk. It was here on this day in 1867 that officials of the Russian Empire formally transferred the Territory of Alaska to the United States in a sale for $7.2 million, or just around 2 cents per acre. It seems an astonishingly small price today, but at the time, opponents called it 'Seward's Folly' after then-Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the deal. Few Americans moved to the 'Last Frontier' at first, but in the 1890s, when gold was discovered in the Yukon and Alaska, a rush of prospectors and others began a wave of settlers in the territory. Ever since, Alaska, with its vast natural resources and staggering beauty, has been a prized American domain and an enduring symbol of American wilderness.

Fog above the forest

Today we're looking out over Pisgah National Forest, which was established on this day in 1916. One of the first national forests in the eastern United States, it's comprised of more than 500,000 acres of mountainous peaks, cascading waterfalls, and heavily forested slopes. With hundreds of miles of trails, Pisgah is a popular place for hiking, backpacking, road biking, mountain biking, fishing, and rock climbing.

The land here was first set aside as a public forest with approximately 86,700 acres that were previously part of the Biltmore Estate owned by George Vanderbilt II. But when he passed away in 1914, his wife, Edith Vanderbilt, sold the land to the federal government for $5 an acre, fulfilling her husband's wishes to create the core of the Pisgah National Forest.

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