Another week goes by and now I am sure of it - autumn is on the doorstep. Cooler nights sweep in with a cold front that seems to shove all things hot and humid out to sea. The Walnut in the bottom of the yard is simultaneously turning yellow and shedding leaves. Birds begin their southerly migrations. The Catbirds are gone. I already miss them. I'm drawn to almost daily walks on the game lands and my local state park, Susquehannock.
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| Bjerkandera adusta, a common bracket fungi on hardwood logs. |
I was hiking with family this weekend on the C&O Canal, the next section of our end-to-end walk from Washington D.C. to Cumberland, MD. While we chatted about things happening in our lives, we stopped frequently to remark about sounds and colors. "This is becoming my favorite time," said my niece, "the in-between summer and fall." We noticed low light by late afternoon and by five p.m., Barred Owls echoed through the swamps at McKee Besher Wildlife Management Area, our destination for the day. We slowed our walk to take in the setting sun and the darkening lowland woods
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| Turkey Tail, Trametes versicolor, another common autumn bracket fungi. |
The in-between time is subtle yet exciting. The PA Game Commission has turned on its popular live streaming Elk Cam up in Elk County and I bookmark it on my computer anticipating the action of the rut. As I write this post, there is a streaming chorus of field crickets and conversational crows in a cut-cover corn field and I stop what I'm doing to take a scan of the woods edge. I go back to my writing when a deep grunt erupts from the woods and I quickly switch tabs to take a look as the camera scans the clearing. Elk? Bear? I make my annual vow to get up there and go elk watching on those amazing public lands.
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| Old blazes mark a well-trodden trail at Susquehannock State Park. |
Since our treks to Hawk Mountain, I've seen a dozen Coopers Hawks shoot through the woods on my walks. I've heard as many Red-shouldered and Red-tailed Hawks. At night Screech Owls whinny and Lightning Bugs flicker their very last. The last flash I noted was Thursday night. None since. Thistles, Fleabanes, and Milkweed have gone to seed. Sunflower heads are drooping and nodding in the garden and sparkle with Goldfinches picking seeds. I filled my feeders for the first time since late spring. Before I could get to the porch, a Red-Bellied Woodpecker and her two offspring came right away to investigate.
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| Painted rock sits peacefully in a tree cricket-filled forest. |
The Red-Bellied Woodpecker was teaching her young ones to take seeds from the feeder. She was patient and tender and allowed me to stand nearby as she demonstrated how to chose a seed, crack it, and discard the shells. She chittered to them as they perfected their take-and-break method. I could hear the crackle of sunflower seeds and watched white flakes of shell drop to the grass. The scene was not the electric red and yellow of mid-October, nor the sizzle and drench of a hot humid day, but it has a tender energy that defines this in-between time of transition.
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White Wood Aster
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| Great Blue Lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica |
Walking Amos in game lands over in Holtwood, I took in the big view and noted the colors and sounds of the meadows. Grasshoppers were everywhere, rasping and chewing, exploding up just as my boot touched the ground with a startling snap and clatter of wings. There are no complex algorithms or mechanized process to consider, just the shortening of days and the timed responses to shifts in the photoperiod to elicit the first elk bugle of the year, for Fleabane to burst its encapsulated seed head, and to ignite this chorus of insect song and grasshopper profusion so loud I can hardly hear a single bird call. There are no elk here, but I wish there were. I vow again to make the journey north - and soon.
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| Seedheads burst open, ready to catch a breeze. |
The in-between is not all peace and cricket song, however. Black bears are increasingly emboldened by the quick pickings in the orchard and farm yard. Winter is coming and they are beginning to feed heavily, greedily, on anything they can rustle up - even if it's on the front porch. It's best to bring in the bird feeders at night. Hawks leave piles of feathers where they've picked off a neo-tropical migrant near the feeder station. With each brush of a hurricane from the south or swift moving front from the west, there are new obstacles to climb over or through as newly windthrown trees and or broken limbs lay across the trail. These are the exclamation points in an otherwise slow turning of September's transition.
In a time that is generally quiet, and for some, spiritual, yet we are challenged to accept the harshness of nature along with the beauty. We live in an altered state of nature, a condition born of hundreds of years of human management and so it's easy to feel settled and peaceful. But the struggle for winter's survival begins now and in earnest, no matter how simplified we've made the landscape. People who live close to the land, however, do not ignore subtle signals and they are busy preparing, taking inventory, and stocking up. Venison will be in the freezer by Christmas. Canned vegetables are filling the pantry now. Refilled water jugs are stowed out of sight for when the power goes out come winter storms.
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| Goldenrod signals the time to prepare. |
Most of us live in a de-natured world. We no longer fear our natural environment so it doesn't figure into modern living. Nothing much is left in our human-controlled landscape that could eat us, so other than threats of severe weather, natural environment is relegated to the background. Here on the game lands, however, I see another subtle sign of a season's turning - the presence of a man and his hunting dog, both outfitted in blaze orange but without a gun for today is Sunday. Soon we are chatting as our dogs sniff and wag and greet.
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| Walking Amos in the game lands. |
It has become something of a fall tradition that we walk our dogs on Sunday mornings and eventually cross paths. His yellow lab, Cory, stands patiently while coonhound Amos bounces all around. Cory's dad catches me up on all things Game Commission and he's not too happy about a recent change. As frustrating as the regulations are to him, however, he says he's glad we have so much public hunting land to use. He volunteers with a fish and game club to help clear trails here and he knows how precious this landscape is. "Seems like every time I turn around, Lancaster County is turning another farm into a subdivision."
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Hairy Thoroughwort and Clubmoss.
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At the end of the 19th century, Pennsylvania's landscapes looked very different. Most forests had been logged off. Farmlands, much of it degraded and exhausted, took the place of the woods. Deer were rare. Elk and bear and mountain lion had been hunted to extinction. The Game Commission formed out of the State Sportsman Association in an attempt to stop the wastage and begin the process of restoring habitat and populations of game. By 1897 laws and regulations were enacted to protect what little was left but with an eye to the future. Enforcing those new laws was dangerous work. Nearly twenty wardens were shot and killed by 1905. That same year the PGC was given the task to acquire and secure as conservation acreage and twenty game lands were established. Now there are 335 designated conservation areas protecting 1.5 million acres for regulated public hunting, the protection of natural heritage, and the increase of biodiversity.
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| From the Hawk Watch Overlook, Susquehannock State Park |
After our game lands visit, Amos and I stopped by Susquehannock State Park and wander out to the overlook where a pair of hawk spotters had set up their scopes and cameras. I asked about the early count so far. I'm told there have been a few osprey and quite a few hawks. The spotter showed me her clipboard. I mentioned I'd been up to Hawk Mountain a few weekends in a row recently. "Aren't we lucky?" she says, "To be able to catch the early stream of migrants?" As I look upriver across the Susquehanna Valley I am thankful, too, that we have so much protected land - almost everything thing in my view is conservation land. The trees looked a little yellower and the sky heavy with cold front squall clouds, subtle signs of changes to come.
Notes:
My niece and I marveled at the past-bloom sunflower fields at McKee Beshers Wildlife Management Area near the C&O Canal. Acres of heavy, nodding heads of sunflower seeds made for the biggest feeding station I've ever seen.
https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/publiclands/central/sunflowers.aspx
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