Autumn – Dave Greschner Outdoor Journal

Walking the land

Introduction: During this season of giving thanks and giving gifts, I am sharing several excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released last Christmas. For the holiday season, the book is available through me at a special price. See information at the end of this post. The following chapter, “Walking the Land,” is from the November-December segment of the book. Enjoy.

I’d like to think the land remembers my face, my gait, and that I was a friend. Still am. Why else would I keep returning to these woods, pastures, fields, and old farmsteads?

I come here now because I was here as a youth. Growing up here, the land etched in me the tranquility of tall pine trees, amber sunsets beyond fields of green corn, flaming maples, and fox tracks crossing fields of snow.

I nurtured a love for the land and for walking the land. There remains within me a desire to walk out the back door, through the barnyard to the pasture, up the hill and through the woods, across the town road and through the neighbors’ fields, pastures and woods, as I once did.

Though properties were defined by fences and roads, they remained joined by the land’s flow of hills and valleys and tree lines. And the sweat of settlers.

The land I walked for miles in all directions had different owners, but owners who were not much different from each other. They were farmers bonded to their neighbors by the need for green pastures, healthy crops and livestock, and firewood. Come hunting time there was a sharing of the land to an extent I’ll never see again.

These descendants of immigrant settlers from only a generation or two ago were willing to share. They lived the saying of Native Americans, “Who are we without the corn, the rabbit, the sun, the rain and the deer? Know this, my people, the all does not belong to us. We belong to the all.”

When I visited this land on a mild, sunny afternoon in early November, I knew I could cross the property of at least one family, for they are the children and grandchildren of my parents’ neighbors a generation ago. From our woodlot, I headed for the huge rock on the adjoining farm we once owned. The rock is in a valley of the pasture, near a small creek at the foot of tall pines. The rock is larger than a chest freezer. It begs one to pause.

I sat on the rock as a kid while exploring, and later as a young man while hunting. In his journal, “In Context,” Native American Kenneth Cooper (Cha-das-ska-dum) wrote that the Lummi tribal members in Washington tell their children, “You sit on this rock, and I’ll come back in a couple of hours, and you tell me what you learned.”

Patience is what children will learn on the rock, and what we all should learn if we take the time to sit under a canopy of tranquility. I sat on the rock for a time and then pushed on to the first deer stand my dad built. The boards are rotting and crumbling. I think I should rip the deer stand down someday. I think I don’t want to.

On this mild afternoon I nestled my back against the trunk of a large maple tree and slid to the ground, letting the sun find my face. I listened to a dog barking in the distance. It could have been my dog decades ago, barking at a treed squirrel from the base of this very tree.

I got up and begin pushing over a series of hardwood hills, crossing the tracks of deer and wild turkeys. I stood in a clearing between woodlots, where as a young photographer I was consumed with the golden leaves of birches against a blue autumnal sky. The birches are still there. And today, so am I.

Note: Want to read more nature essays such as this? Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is also available at regular prices through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

A waning day in autumn

Introduction: During this season of giving thanks and giving gifts, I want to share several excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released at Christmas a year ago. For the holiday season, the book will be available through me at a special price. See information at the end of this post. The following is the introduction, “Sometimes the Best of Times,” for the November-December segment of the book. Enjoy.

I was in a tree swaying to the rapid rhythm of nature’s breathing when it hit me. Not literally, though I suppose a branch could have let loose in the chesty November wind and knocked me on the noggin.

What hit me was that my autumn of blue skies, dazzling leaves, calm afternoons and the passing of migrating geese was over. Now all I could see and feel was fall ending. I saw it through bare branches as I stared in vain for a deer to appear. I felt a chill run through my body from the wind and clouds as the sun was slinking to the southwest.

There was little bird activity, though two chickadees came within whispering distance, and a blue jay squawked, irritated by something. Maybe me. Or maybe the warning of winter in its bones. At times the bursts of wind scattered the hunt’s focus while delivering the sounds of the countryside putting to rest this late autumn day

A cow bellowed at the farm in the valley, perhaps at feeding time, just before milking time. A dog barked, at the farm on the other side of the field. A car slowed at a driveway, and the dog barked with more gusto. And then there was quiet as a car door slammed and, I was sure, a dog’s tail wagged.

Children’s laughter and shouts rippled across the picked cornfield to my spot at the confluence of field and forest. The voices fell mute, and I imagined supper was ready. From another field I heard a tractor revving and clanking to load a round bale of hay before groaning out of hearing range.

Darkness gathered rapidly. I climbed down from my stand. I had heard the countryside preparing for the night, and I had heard the whistle of winter in the wind. The whistle would only get louder from here on, with the days passing rapidly as we hurtle toward Thanksgiving, a new month, the magic and memories the first snowfall brings, holiday music and gift shopping, and the winter solstice.

(The second half of this piece will appear closer to Christmas, as it is a Christmas Eve story about a boy and his father, a find of honey in the woods, and a farmhouse warmed by a Christmas Eve meal in the oven.)

Note: Want to read more nature essays such as this? Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email, text, or call me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available at regular prices through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

A calm encounter

There was calmness in the deer’s eyes, a calmness that spread across its oval face. The deer stood there, staring at me. There was a hint of curiosity, but no fear, no alarm. The deer’s face had a softness about it, as soft as the September foliage, turning to faded greens and pale yellows.

I was on a morning run on the Wild Rivers Trail, at a point where a path drops gently away from the trail for 40 feet before opening into a meadow. As I ran past this narrow corridor, in my peripheral vision I saw a deer, facing the trail from the far portal. A strand of old, smooth fence wire drooped near its knees.

It was a doe, no doubt intending to walk from the meadow to the trail, but stopping when it heard me, then saw me. I knew what to do next if I wanted a photo. I ran past the opening as if I hadn’t seen the doe, then stopped behind cover.

I didn’t have my long-lens camera, so readied my phone camera and tip-toed back to the opening. In these cases, the objective is to get a quick first photo before the animal bolts. It won’t be the perfect photo but good enough for a memory.

I eased into the opening. The doe was still there, attentive to my presence but showing no alarm. I began positioning for better photos, putting myself into clear view. The doe studied my slow approach.

For what seemed like several minutes, I alternated between baby steps and pauses, coming closer and closer to the doe. It simply stared at me with large, pensive eyes. I was within 10 feet of the deer when it slowly turned sideways, walked a few feet into the meadow and began eating leaves off an aspen sapling. It chewed while nonchalantly looking at me.

I walked toward it again, within five paces. The doe appeared healthy, the hair on its plump body beginning to take on a darker autumn hue. I was quite sure it was a yearling; it was too big, its body too mature, to be this year’s fawn.

How does one explain calm encounters with wild animals? Was the deer simply curious? It had surely encountered humans before, but perhaps had never felt threatened by them. For whatever reason, I posed no danger to the doe.

In his book “Within These Woods,” author Timothy Goodwin writes about a healthy young deer that adopted the family cabin as a place to eat corn out of family members’ hands. It had first appeared out of nowhere, nudging at Timothy’s father from behind.

Folks who believe in “spirit animals” say that deer have a strong spiritual connection, allowing them to be aware of the subtle energies happening around them. In this belief, deer are attracted to people whose spiritual centers are giving off vibrations of gentleness and compassion.

That’s nice to think. As I stood in front of the doe that morning, I wondered: Could I actually touch this deer? I only wondered. I backed away, not wanting to unsettle the gentleness of the moment. The doe ambled among the short saplings. I walked back to the trail and continued my run.

Note: Want to read more nature essays like this? My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Bayfield (Honest Dog), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Stevens Point (Bound to Happen), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Tailing the butterflies

I curbed my fascination with monarch butterflies when the swallowtails showed up. I was standing in a hayfield, the August morning’s harvest of firewood stacked in the trailer. I took my camera and walked into the blooming red clover.

There were half a dozen or more monarchs within my camera range. This was good news, or good views, for several years ago I stood in this same spot and was lucky to see a monarch or two. Are they recovering with our awareness of how much a milkweed plant means to a monarch butterfly? Or was I witnessing the early signs of migration, when monarchs gather in groups and roost by the hundreds in trees.

I’ve seen the roosting once, as a child, in the giant cottonwood tree of our farmyard. There were hundred of monarchs on the trunk and the lower branches on an afternoon in September. I’ve never forgotten the sight, and have not seen it since. But I keep looking.

As impressive is the monarch with wings in varying shades of orange, and white and yellow spots on the black borders, my eye was suddenly captured by an even larger butterfly. The giant and tiger swallowtails (giant swallowtail in photo above) were also probing the red clover, extending their proboscis tubes into the purple sweetness.

At 6 inches, the wingspan of a swallowtail is at least 2 inches wider than a monarch. It also has those tails protruding from the rear wings, which the monarch doesn’t have. And, with yellow and deep brown wings with dots of orange and blue here and there, an argument could be made that the swallowtail is as colorful as the monarch.

But there is one big difference in the two species. The monarchs we see now are the last of two or three generations to hatch in these parts this summer. Monarchs summering on their breeding range will only live a month, give or take a week. That is, except for the last generation we now see in August. These monarchs will live up to 9 months, and they are the ones that will make the incredible flight of nearly 2,000 miles to the forests of central Mexico, where they hibernate.

Unlike birds, overwintering monarchs in Mexico will not return to our northland. They will start out in February, lay eggs in the southern states and then die. Young monarchs will pick up the chase northward.

But the swallowtail will not fly south. Like monarchs, the swallowtails’ life expectancy in our summer midst is short—about a month. This will continue until the last eggs are laid and the swallowtails’ larvae caterpillars emerge. Before frost, those caterpillars will turn into pupas on several types of plants and also tree twigs.

Tiny butterflies overwinter inside the pupa, or chrysalis, with butterflies emerging when the weather warms in spring. It can be a long wait for a monthlong life as a fluttering butterfly.

So I stand in the field of clover, the monarchs and butterflies all about me. In a few weeks, some will fly thousands of miles, others will lay eggs and give up their lives. Now, I am fascinated with swallowtails, too.

Jays brighten the day

Maligned as it may be, the blue jay has never looked so blue or sounded so welcome a note as now across the drab woods and yards of late fall. As winter gathers on the horizon, it’s too easy to assume the countryside is devoid of color and bird sounds.

So I look anew at the jay of blue, wherever it shares its foot-long color. The bird shows at least half a dozen hues of blue in its feathers—violet and azure if you prefer—along with black, white and gray. The tail is barred in black, and on its head is a handsome crest.

I say “shows” blue because, surprise, the blue jay has no blue pigment. In an optical illusion of sorts, the jay’s melanin is actually brown, but we see it, thankfully, as blue when wavelengths pass through pockets of air and keratin in the bird’s feathers, extracting all colors except blue.

No matter what pigment, the blue jay’s colors draw attention to itself. Not that it needs color for attention, for its screech pierces the silent woods and quiet winter yards. The “noise” provides most of the reason we perceive the blue jay as raucous. I read about novelist Stephen King telling of how boredom on his walks invited creativity, so he didn’t open the book he took along “no matter how bored I felt looking at the same old trees and same old chattering, ill-natured jays…” And then I saw outdoor writer Jerry Wilbur noting that chickadees at the feeder in December can be crowded out by “bully blue jays.”

And yet, besides the cardinal, where do we go for such intense color this time of year? The blue jay gives me hope to look for more colors across the drab landscape, like the crimson of oak leaves, the orange of bittersweet, the green of pines, the red head patches of several species of woodpeckers.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of blue jays this fall. Sure, they’re noisy at times and, yes, even raucous. But from the deer stand I’ve studied and listened enough to know that when perched they also emit low mixtures of whistles and sweet chattering, and higher notes like those of a toy trumpet.

Above all, the blue jays are always pretty. And when they fly away I miss them, and wait for the next screech signaling their return of blue.

A shutter flush

I tried this for fun. A camera, not a gun. It was mid-September, before the leaves got deep into painting by species. I went looking for ruffed grouse.

I have hunted grouse for years with a camera slung over my back, the telephoto lens precariously swinging into branches and bumping against my back as I crossed uneven ground. On my back the camera is of no use for taking photos of grouse on the fly. The flush happens in an instant, without notice. The camera was for the occasional deer that appears or bittersweet burning orange against autumn’s blue sky.

So I went hunting with a camera to get that first ever—which I find hard to believe—photo of a grouse in flight. If you think targeting a grouse on the fly with a shotgun is hard, try it with a camera. Autofocus is sometimes too slow, or for the person behind the camera it’s too hard to get the focus dots on the rapidly fleeing target as the lens line swings across branches and brush.

I have only a handful of live ruffed grouse photos over many years of pursuing the woods chicken. They are wary, hiding before whirling away in an unnerving racket of pounding wings. Every now and then you can sneak up on one, perhaps on its drumming log, or see a young one on the road. But photographing one in flight? That’s hard.

I wanted to “shoot” the grouse by raising my camera just as I would my shotgun. So I held the camera ready and stepped into the woods. I soon flushed a grouse, but the bird was immediately into too much brush. I moved forward for the reflush, now on high alert, my eyes darting back and forth, my finger on the shutter. I kept walking slowly to avoid the pause that will send the bird into nervous flight too far ahead.

Suddenly the bird burst from the ground. It was close but immediately put a tree trunk between me and my camera. Gone again. And then the scene repeated throughout the afternoon with other birds in other places.

I had given up, but had to walk down a narrow road back to my truck. Suddenly, in the ditch with scattered low bushes and tall, tan grass stems bending with the breeze, I saw movement. My camera came up just as the grouse did, curving away over the field. Click, click, click, click. One of those clicks captured the bird in focus. Finally, I had the photo.

Autumn against the wall

It’s late October and I want to sit on the south side of the old shed, an autumn afternoon’s slanting sunshine on my face, the weathered red boards and my shadow at my back. Today takes me back to that spot, immerses me in memories of when I soaked up the fading warmth of the sun before cold nights and the first snow that stayed under pewter clouds grimacing in the biting winds.

The shed was part grainery, part storage and always home to mice, the mice that never smelled a feed sack they couldn’t chew open. A barn cat was locked in the granary overnight for hunting duty but it didn’t buy into the job. Horse collars, long retired, hung on the wall next to a broadcast seeder that in spring had filled in the spots the wheeled oats drill missed. There was a scythe with a dull blade on the wall, and a tannish baseball inexplicably stuck into a dog collar that hung on a nail.

The sun both soothed and enhanced my senses, already saturated with fall smells of dying grass and fallen leaves. From the other side of the boards through a broken window pane came the waft of spilled oil and fresh oats. I would stare at the pasture and woods for the next passing of anxious blackbirds or a love-struck buck. Across the fields a neighbor’s dog barked. Or was that migrating geese in the distance?

In his book, “The Seasons of America Past,” Eric Sloan writes, “We have actually come to believe today that we must either progress or retrogress … there is no such thing as intelligently remaining stationary.”

I was neither progressing or retrogressing on the south side of the shed. But I remember contentment in my stationary being in late autumn’s sun.

Into the weather

I normally accept weather as it’s handed out, because weather is going to be weather whether I whine or not. So I’m gracious on the good days, stoic on the bad days. I like to ignore the rain and go for a walk, defy the cold and go for a run, and always stay out in the snow, listening for the whisper of white landing on my wool.

But I do prefer my Octobers with some measure of warmth from the slant of the afternoon sun as the crispness of morning settles into a soft breeze to stir the leaves and my ambitions. I like the color of the month, and then the branches as they bare against a blue autumnal sky, revealing nests that were the birds’ task of spring, birds and their young ones now flown away. I love the quiet gathering of darkness after a golden sunset, so still I can hear acorns fall and squirrels scurry in the leaves.

But not this October, not since that first golden week. We settled into too-cool temperatures, too much wind, chilly rain and then those 5 inches of snow on the 20th day of the month, exactly 2 months before the winter solstice. The woodland trail is soggy as I slog for firewood, and the tree stand waits for me as I wait for a bit warmer temperatures in which to hunt deer silently and still, not shivering from the chill.

Yes, I accept the weather but also wait on it, for the sun, the geese against the blue sky, and someone mentioning the last feel of summer. There is firewood to cut, grouse to flush, deer trails to find and wait along, and sandhill cranes to hear barking across the sky, winging high and southward.

The long-range forecast is favorable as Halloween week carries us into November. Favorable for sunshine and temperatures into the 40˚s, perhaps even 50˚. I count on October to exit as nicely as it entered. With that thought I’m going into the weather, hoping it comes along with some warm enthusiasm.

Hunt of many directions

All my shotgun would knock down on this day would be apples. I was hunting for ruffed grouse, but I found smooth-skinned apples, field rocks, bittersweet berries and a hornet nest. That was fine, to just let the autumn day take me in whatever direction for whatever observation it wanted me to absorb.

The tree in the pasture between the woodlot and brush was cleared of apples only as high as a deer can reach. The deer needed some help, so I beat the October winds to the task. I pointed my long-barreled shotgun straight up and tapped branch after branch. Apples tumbled to the ground and rolled to a rest in wet grass. Red on green. A deer’s delight tonight.

I headed back for the woods and the birdy-looking brush. I displaced some grouse without dispatching any. I pushed on, simply happy that a grouse hunt meanders on the whims of wings in October’s color.

Along the fence line I stumbled over a leaf-covered rock pile I did not remember being there. The rocks would be easy pickings if I wanted some in our yard and gardens. But if I took some, would I disturb the homes of weasels and chipmunks and a hundred species of insects, all burrowing in for winter?

Not far away a grayish bald-faced hornet’s nest hung from a branch about 12 feet up in a small maple tree, which was intent on shedding golden leaves and exposing nature’s construction of wonder. By this time in autumn the hornets are dead save for the queen, who will ride out winter nestled under the bark or in the crevice of an old tree. Hornets won’t use the nest again. It would look nice in the back porch. I noted the location.

The hunt moved past the bright orange berries of bittersweet vines and crimson leaves of blackberry bushes. I paused, staring at the color, wondering what direction to take. My pensive pause flushed a wary grouse. I followed its flight.