Autumn – Dave Greschner Outdoor Journal

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.

Autumn’s grace

The breeze seemed to pause along the fence line, perhaps to wonder at the same maple tree draped in hues of yellow, orange and red that had captured my gaze. Then the breeze picked up, rustling the leaves against the blue sky.

It was the perfect autumn day, swinging my moods from frustration to inspiration, anxious to gracious. And not without a hint of frustration again as I asked myself: Do I have to leave this woodland wonderland?

But I settled on the inspiring positive, tracing the soft flow of the land as it showed off brilliant color before it lets go of another season. There was a sweet contentment in the easy resignation that this was the last act, albeit a glorious one.

What is it that wraps one in heavy emotions of nostalgia and reflection on such a day in autumn? Are our memories that rich, that close to the surface, of the blazing maple hills beyond the homes of our childhood?

Perhaps the end of a season so beautiful but too short gives us cause to pause and consider our own end. If autumn all around us is so glorious, wouldn’t we wish for the same when our personal harvest is over? Do the loved ones who have gone before us come more sweetly to mind as we recall how they loved this season, how they’d love to see it again.

And so we realize how fortunate we are to be wrapped in another autumn, watching how gracefully nature moves on. A leaf falls, but it has its place on the forest floor. We would be best served to accept the same cycles of life and find our place.

Return of the pry bar

I had lost the pry bar. It went missing somewhere in the 40 acres of woods that is my outdoor sanctuary, where I cut wood and hunt for grouse and deer while watching the natural world pass by slowly and sanely.

The pry bar is 6 feet long, heavy at 16 pounds but lean and mean. I purchased it for $5 at a yard sale 20 some years ago, and ever since it has helped me argue with logs, urging them to roll over so I can reduce them to 18-inch chunks of firewood. The pry bar was my work companion and I’m sure would serve as a weapon in case of an unexpected attack.

I would normally set the pry bar against a tree when not using it, knowing full well if I laid it down it could disappear on the forest floor, which I feared had happened. So I searched that forest floor for nearly 2 years, before leaf fall and through deer hunting and early winter if there was no snow, and in early spring on the forest floor of flattened leaves. I even offered a cash reward during deer hunting for any family members or friends stumbling across it.

It didn’t turn up. I tried to remember every spot where I had cut firewood that fall, and I kept searching those areas. But nothing. I became resigned to the fact that I would never find the pry bar, or that when I did it would be 20 years down the road when I can only walk the woods, not work the woods. I promised myself I wouldn’t curse the late find, but instead pass the tool along to a younger woodcutter who could use it, who would be fortunate to have the same woodland opportunities that I have had.

But it was only two years down the road when one spring day, while surveying the woodlot as it rid itself of the last remnants of winter, when I saw the pry bar leaning against a tree. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Jubilation! I had set the bar so upright that it was hard to see against the big tree trunk, and it was on the opposite side of the narrow tote road that so many of us walked so many times during the hunting seasons.

Reunited, we went back to working together, the pry bar and me, last spring and now into this fall. My work companion had been faithful, staying right where I put it, waiting through the seasons for me to return. Someday someone else will own the pry bar, but not before they know the full story.

Sunsets and chestnuts

Through no wishful thinking or design on our part, others’ plight transformed into our delight as the red sun slipped toward the shores of Lake Superior. I walked the 30 feet from our camper door to where the water danced on the shoreline rocks of Chequamegon Bay, my camera in hand. I was not the only one. Half a dozen folks were being pulled to the lakeshore on this early evening in mid September, pulled by the show across the water on the western horizon.

The sun was settling down and taking on a complexion of orange and red, the color more intense as the horizon neared, belying the sun’s soft manner and silent slide at this moment. Filtered through smoky haze we could not easily see or smell, the pretty hue of the sunset was nevertheless the result of wildfires ravaging the West, nearly 2,000 miles away.

How could this be, this peaceful, pretty byproduct of the fiery destruction so far away? I felt guilty. “Did you get a winner?” a woman asked as I clicked through the images on my camera. Perhaps, but that sunset told a tale of tragedy. Nobody wins. The sun slipped away.

Night came and so did the stars. Upon arrival at the campground I had taken a reading on directions, using my phone. I noted North, but now at night I wanted the stars to reaffirm it, for if I ever have to choose, I will take the stars over my phone. From the same spot I stood in the afternoon, I found Polaris, the North Star, with pointer help from the Big Dipper. Technology and the heavens were in perfect accord. Lights of a harbor town flickered across the bay; campfires flickered around us.

The water was choppy the next afternoon as the wind picked up. The brisk breeze was from the west—no doubt carrying more smoke our way. My wife and I took the walking trail lined with trees and bushes that hugged the shoreline and hindered the wind. I turned my attention to the vegetation along the path. Soon I had a collection of plants and flowers in my mind and on my camera, including bur marigolds in yellow, touch-me-nots in orange, crown vetch in whitish pink, and milkweed, still holding green pods this far north.

From one small tree I picked its round fruit, the hull olive-colored and spiky. Later I split the hull open to uncover two dark brown, shiny nuts inside. The tree was a horse-chestnut, according to the resources I called upon. A new discovery for me.

We returned to the campsite and began cooking outside. Another clear evening on Lake Superior, another sunset across the big water. Later, around the campfire, I stared into the flickering glow, thankful for flames that provide reflection, not destruction.