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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. 

An apple away

Five apples. That’s all I could count as I circled the tree, tucked away out of sight just off the trail in this woodland beyond the city’s edge. Low brush scratched my legs as I stumbled beneath the branches, my gaze upward. The apples were rather large, their species unknown to me. Now there’s only three.

I knew this tree was here, having taken photos last winter of its neglected apples, too high for deer to reach, brown and frozen apples wearing caps of new snow. Now in the heart of apple season there was only a handful of apples on the old scraggly tree, probably past its life’s prime of production.

I first saw this tree years ago while running through the woodland. The autumn discovery of an apple tree far away from buildings and roads always stirs my imagination. The red jewels of September are right there in front of me, but the tree’s history is not as easy to see.

Was I standing where a farmstead once thrived a century or more ago? Was the apple tree in the backyard, or perhaps in the woodlot just beyond where I found what looked like the remannts of a building’s foundation? If I poke further off the trail, will I find more signs of a farm’s crumbled past?

I imagine the tree was once harvested by someone who lived here or nearby. Harvested on pretty autumn days, the promise of apple pie in the pickers’ hands. Did the farmers come here with gunny sacks, or was an apron simply folded up for a makeshift bag?

Now the tree bears fruit with no idea for whom. Perhaps deer and bear, and birds, along with the occasional woodland hiker who passes by. I couldn’t resist. The two largest and most red of the five apples were within arm’s reach. I snapped one off the twig, and the other tumbled to the ground. One for me, one for the deer.

I imagined the deer finding the treat later that day, like a child discovering a shiny penny on the sidewalk. I walked away, clutching my red prize in my hand, having added another small piece in the history of an old apple tree gently living out its life in near obscurity.

Striders on the water

From the brushy river bank on this warm September afternoon, I stare into the pool of stagnant water that the sluggish river has bypassed. The more I stare the more I see aquatic life on and above the water, including the gangly-legged insects that catch my attention. They look like giant mosquitos moving on top of the water, though they are not much longer than half an inch.

They are water striders, though the name doesn’t exactly fit what they are doing, for there is no striding happening here if striding means taking long steps. No, the water strider is gliding, scooting, skimming, skating or any other similar words that could describe its rapid propulsions across the water’s surface.

Nature has provided the water strider with short front legs to grab and hold prey. But wait, there are four more legs, much longer legs. The middle two legs push the insect forward, while the two hind legs provide steering.

I watch the water striders scoot forward a few inches on the water’s surface, which in turn is only a few inches above the tannish, silty backwater bottom. The insect suddenly stops and skates in a different direction. A thin membrane created by water surface tension, combined with delicate hairs on the strider’s feet, keep this insect atop the water.

Some striders race toward ripples, which at first baffled me until I later learned that the ripples can either be the sign of prey in distress—an easy meal—or a female strider ready to mate. I stand motionless, drawn to the striders’ movements as much as the striders are drawn to the ripples. Meal or mate.

Later, I was puzzled why my photos of the water striders showed six blobs below each leg. The slightly oblong shadow spots were many times larger that the strider’s six feet. Then, Annie Dillard in “Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek” solved the mystery for me. Wrote Dillard, “I watch the water striders skate over the top of the water, and I watch the six dots of shade—made by their feet dimpling the water’s surface—slide dreamily over the bottom silt.”

The dots are dimples. All day long the water strider dimples the water. Taking life in stride on the river’s edge.

Trails to new nugget

There’s plenty of comfort in knowing where you’re going in life, short term, long term, figuratively and literally. But in my summer of intensified camping I’ve had to look beyond the comfort of my two or three favorite campgrounds.

Not that I want to, for my favorite spots are where it’s easy to pull in or back in the fifth-wheel camper, where the windows and chairs face the lake, and where I get a clear view of the stars and planets at night while at the same time it doesn’t feel like a bear is ready to join my wife and me at the campfire.

So when my brother-in-law said he had made reservations at Nugget Lake County Park in Pierce County in western Wisconsin, and would we want to get a site there also for the last weekend in August, well, I didn’t know if I wanted to. It’s not on my “favorites” list, never mind that it had never even been given the chance to make the list.

But I was forced, no, that word’s too strong, persuaded to pick up the phone. We got Site 32, right across from my brother-in-law and his wife in Site 33. So we were headed somewhere different—translate out of my comfort zone—among the fields, hills and creeks between Plum City and Ellsworth, about 10 miles from the Mighty Miss.

In the days leading up to the Nugget Lake trip I eased my apprehension by making light of our destination, calling it Nutsy Lake and recalling scenes from vacation movies where everything can and will be wrong and go wrong. Boy, was I wrong.

This isn’t a travelogue blog, but I can tell you that I’ve added Nugget Lake County Park to my favorites list. The back-in wasn’t as hard as I thought—my brother-in-law trucker made me do it myself because I “need the practice”—the sites are large and wooded just enough to provide some privacy, and there are clean bathrooms/showers and a park staff patrolling and helping.

But what sold me were the miles of trails cut into the woods and meadows all through the park, neatly-mown 6-foot wide grassy paths right up my trail running alley. Foot bridges cross over Rock Elm Creek, and one outing took us to Blue Rock, a massive rock of dolostone that is part of the Rock Elk Disturbance. That wall of jagged rock, which has both underview and overview areas, was formed by a “cataclysmic explosive event,” in other words, a massive meteor impact, say the geologists.

To think of the shock wave that formed this 470 million years ago and then see a group of kids playing beneath it in Rock Elm Creek catching crawdads as their mother and dog watched in the afternoon sun was truly bringing the past and present together in this special geological spot.

We were also surrounded by the yellow hues of goldenrod and Jerusalem artichoke, the purples of blooming Canadian thistle and the orange of touch-me-nots in the wetlands. As I gazed on the sprawling, rising meadow in front of me, I thought of how a few weeks earlier I was not excited to touch this Nugget Lake campground just because it wasn’t on my comfort list. It is now. Like the Blue Rock, this spot had an impact on me. A new nugget.

The hum of August

The bird takes a break from feeding and darts straight for a tiny branch, no thicker than your little finger, about 15 feet away from and higher than the glass of nectar. The short bare branch was left behind from when I trimmed the small maple. Little did I know it would be the bird’s staging and resting perch.

The bird is only 3 inches long, so to see it perched in a rather sizable tree is almost comical. If I had not seen it fly from the feeder to the branch it would be hard to pick out. Its beak is proportionately too long for its body but just right for probing nectar from the sweet tubes of bee balm—by nature—or the hanging red feeder—by human.

When the ruby-throated hummingbird returns to the feeder, I watch in awe and ask aloud: Little bird, are you really going to fly to Mexico next month? There’s no answer, just a chipping call as the tiny diner gets excited when another hummer invades its air space. Then there’s a whir of wings, at 80 beats per seconds, as the birds nearly tangle and then jet away.

They’ll be back. The hummingbirds are feeding heavy now, building up fat reserves on a body that normally weighs 3 grams. That’s, well, almost nothing. That’s the weight of three paper clips. Hold three paper clips in your hand. You’re holding the weight of a hummingbird.

So feed they must to store enough body fat for the 1,800-mile trip to Mexico, a trip demanding 500 nonstop miles over the Gulf of Mexico. That is, unless the bird spots an offshore oil rig or fishing boat during the 20-hour gulf flight. It has been known to stop for a rest on such structures or vessels.

Averaging 30 miles per hour, while flying daytime only and taking feeding breaks, it’s a long trip no matter how much whir is in your wings. The hummingbird at my feeder isn’t thinking about miles right now. It’s living by instinct. Time to feed, fatten up and fly away.