Not so black and white

I finally made it out to capture some Aspen trees, on what may likely be the last weekend their leaves are intact:

As I followed the trail back to the car, something more intriguing caught my eye. Sections of the trial were closed off due to clear-cutting. Stumps stuck up all over what once was a lush expanse of trees. On the other side of the trail, piles of lodgepole lay across the now barren land. A sad sight, to say the least, no doubt attributed to the pine beetle. No solution to their infestation is better than another, but one manner of attack has been eliminating the dry, dead trees altogether. On one of the most beautiful Fall mountain days, the Aspens were definitely a strange contrast against the stumps of dead Pines.