Tag Archives: Autumn

The Year’s Last Monarch

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Late September. Edging into what perhaps is the most glorious time of year. The spilled-paint burst of color, the lovely temperatures, the clarity of the sky… not just the blue sky of the day’s vault, but also the starry cloak of night. The fun of the first frost. The delight, finally, of the season’s first sight of snow, up on the ridges and hilltops.
For all its joys, there’s a sorrow to it, too. The coming winter, for all its beauties and delights, will be tougher. Swimming’s over, and hiking will soon follow. Summer seems like a long-ago childhood memory. Most flowers are gone. Many birds and animals leave us in search of warmer dens, or sunnier shores.
One day, the year’s last monarch will flutter by. We won’t notice it at the time, but that’s what it will have been. Our lives will be a little sadder for the loss.
These orange glories are a delight to the eye, and a lesson to our morals. At no stage of their lives do monarchs do any harm.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if WE could say that.
Monarch butterflies once filled our summers, and once, near Bath, we actually saw a flock of hundreds winging south. But their numbers have dwindled and dwindled and dwindled, and it’s our fault, almost entirely. We’re wiping out a beautiful creature that never did us, or anyone else, any harm. What excuse could we have?
For everything else that we’ve killed off, or almost killed off, we can construct a justification that is at least comprehensible, even if it’s wrong. Tigers are big and dangerous, and kill our livestock. Our technology needed the components that we rendered from whale carcasses. A poor subsistence farmer could keep his family alive for two or three days by trapping a few dozen passenger pigeons.
No one ever gained a thing from killing a monarch.
We kill them indirectly, by destroying their habitat or poisoning their environments. But we still kill them, when we should cherish and protect them.
Spring and summer spread the monarchs over much of North America – northern Mexico, the 48 states, southern Canada. Nearly all of the monarchs overwinter in a very small area, usually under 10 acres, in Mexico.
The Fish and Wildlife Service recently showed that in fifteen years, almost a billion of these butterflies had been lost.
That’s a staggeringly bad record.
Just as monarchs do us no harm, some people could argue that they also don’t do us any good. Apart from being pollinators they don’t affect us economically. They don’t impact the bottom line.
That being so, why bother to save them? What difference does it make? How would we justify the cost?
Those would all be very good questions, IF we were materialists. If we lived only for the almighty dollar. If we had no compassion on a helpless creature. If we cared nothing for the happiness of children. If we only wanted lives that could be totted up on a balance sheet, and if we were too terrified to step OFF that sheet into the dangers – and the joys – of our world.
The season’s last monarchs are fluttering southward. Notice them as they go.

Is It Fall Yet?

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So… Labor Day is over, and school has more or less begun. So… is it fall yet?

As far as meteorologists are concerned, fall started on September 1, and runs through November 30. OFFICIAL fall, as defined by astronomers, starts on the autumnal equinox (September 22), and runs through to the winter solstice (December 21).

For most of us, the dividing line comes when we break out of that oppressive August heat, and into much cooler, breezier air. For us in the northeast (I grew up in Rhode Island, now live in the Finger Lakes), that happens right around the first week of September. One of these mornings… quite possibly in September… we’ll actually wake up to frost.

Labor Day weekend is usually adequate for swimming, and maybe the next weekend too. In some years you might squeeze out short dips for even a week or two after that, but usually the holiday, or the weekend after, marks the limit.

In Rhode Island one sign of fall is a gang of men and boys… often including me, when I lived there… going from place to place around the pond, hauling in rafts and docks, and heaving their waterlogged bulk up onto the shore, out of the ice that would one day form.

The last monarchs flutter by, struggling toward a southern clime that only a few of them will reach. We won’t rejoice in their red-and-black flashes again until ever-returning spring.

The haunting clamor of the wild geese, passing over in their wedges, makes a mournful joy. If fall has a signature tune on the soundtrack, it’s the call of the Canada geese, with “summer sun upon their wings, winter in their cry.”

Many of our summer birds disappear, the juncos drift down from higher elevations, and our winter birds suddenly dominate the landscape. They’ve been inspecting our feeders for weeks, although here in bear country, I won’t fill them until November. Before too long our yards will be filled with juncos, blue jays, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, mourning doves, sparrows, flickers, finches, and redbellies. Not to mention starlings and crows.

Our apple orchards and our cider mills, largely unnoticed much of the summer, become busy happy places. Pumpkins appear in the stores and stands, on the porches and windowsills. Pumpkin spice appears in coffee, cakes, and donuts, and in a remarkable list of other foodstuffs. Some farmers create maize mazes.

Acorns crunch beneath our feet, and horse chestnuts get kicked down the sidewalk. We finally stop mowing the lawn. Orion rises higher and higher in the night sky.

One annoying morning we’ll be rifling through closets and drawers, snapping out questions about where we put the gloves, mittens, and stocking caps. One day, without even noticing that we’ve crossed a dividing line, we’ll be putting on sweaters. We won’t realize it at the time, and we won’t think about it later, but one day will be the last day we wear shorts.

Sales of soda and lemonade will nose-dive, though it’s still a little early for hot chocolate. Cream of Wheat, on the other hand, will reappear on breakfast tables.

Halloween ecstacies will blanket the stores, followed by Thanksgiving floods.

And, of course, the leaves will change. They’re starting already, but as the month and the season wear on the colors will explode. For much of the world, and even much of the nation, the color change is rather subdued. For us in the northeast, Mother Nature flings her entire palette onto our forests. Pay attention when she does. And happy fall.

Color Quest — Fall in the Finger Lakes

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Fall in the northeast… fall in the Finger Lakes, no less! Take it from a guy who used to live in Vermont, and loved it; our autumn colors are just as good as theirs.
It’s always hard to recommend good places for peeping at leaves, because the vista varies from day to day, even hour to hour. It even depends on how the sun is shining (or isn’t).
I’m hearing that our “peak” this year was a week or so back. But some trees are still green today! So peak even varies from tree to tree. You never know what you’re going to find, or where you’re going to find it. Some residential streets in Bath and Dansville are gorgeous just now. And one of the most spectacular displays I’ve EVER seen was on Victor Road near Fairport, right by Lollypop Farms – and that, as I recall, was mostly because of the brush, not the trees.
So what the heck, I’ll take the plunge, and suggest some places where I’ve found terrific foliage over the years.

Foliage Villages
In our region, I’ve found two villages where a stroll can deliver really memorable foliage – Hammondsport, and Honeoye Falls. In both places you can wander around on sidewalks, at your own pace, without worrying about you or somebody else being a distracted driver. Hammondsport, of course, gives you the great wall of that wooded cliff looming over town – a gigantic palette – plus the lake, and the colors of the distant shore. But Honeoye Falls also has that wonderful waterfall on the Honeoye Creek, right in the heart of the village. Both places are worth a walk.

View From a Height
At least three high places in our region offer breathtaking views regardless of season, made more magnificent in the fall.
*Mossy Bank Park, near Bath. The lookout here gives a great vista of the village right below, of miles along the Conhocton River and its surroundings to the west, and for a good distance northward to the heights that hide Keuka Lake. And once you’ve surfeited yourself at the lookout, you can walk along the trails in the park.
*Harris Hill, outside Big Flats. At the lookout here you get a great view for several miles of the Chemung River, and the Flats, plus there’s always the chance a sailplane will take off or land right over you. Then you can walk in Harris Hill Park, or in nearby Tanglewood Nature Center.
*Ontario County Park, outside Naples. The lookout at the dramatic “jump off” point gives a staggering view. Add fall colors, and it’s especially impressive. Once again, you’ve then got the park trails to pursue, including the Bristol Hills Trail.

State Parks
I’ve found three of our area state parks to be especially fruitful for fall foliage.
*Stony Brook Park, near Dansville. For some unfathomable reason this park is overlooked and underappreciated. Sometimes you’ll find a yellow wood as you make your way along the brook.
*Watkins Glen State Park in Watkins Glen. If you haven’t been for a while – what’s keeping you? I can almost guarantee you’ll experience parts of it that you’ll swear you’ve never seen before.
*Letchworth State Park, near Mount Morris. To all those fall colors add that great cleft in the earth, and the spectacular falls. What more needs to be said?Top that, Vermont.

A Walk in the Woods
I’ve had really good fall experiences in three places that stand out in my memory.
*Sanford Lake in Moss Hill State Forest, near Savona. Fall brings a lovely bleak beauty to the lake, with its few odd restless waterfowl taking suspicious wing. One trail crosses a little tributary to Mud Creek right by an old beaver dam. I’ve often got the place to myself this time of year.
*Bully Hill State Forest, near Almond. One sunny October afternoon I enjoyed a wonderful walk from Karr Road to Bully Hill Road and back, along the Finger Lakes Trail. The dry leaves crunched deliciously beneath my feet, and birds clicked and twittered along the way.
*Interloken Trail, outside Burdett. Last fall I walked this entire trail in five out-and-back stages. I walked from north to south, and so walked along with autumn. Every hike brought forth a new experience of fall.

Feed the Birds
Mendon Ponds Park, south of Pittsford can be glorious when you catch it right. Walking along a lane shadowed on both sides by long rows of maples, planted in days long gone by someone with confidence in the future, can be like walking through an explosion in the paint factory – or like walking in a stained-glass window. Bring some sunflower seeds along, and the songbirds will eat from your hand.

Any of these I’ve found to be great. But to be perfectly honest, all you’ve got to do for a great fall is to look out your window, or wander your neighborhood. Just really look, and you’re bound to be overwhelmed.

Walking into Autumn

I started at the end of August, and finished at the end of September. I started in the south, and finished in the north. I spent the “better” part of five days walking into autumn.
For a long time I’d been dreaming over my map of the Interloken Trail, through the Finger Lakes National Forest east of Seneca Lake. For a long time I’d been longing to make the hike, and in August I finished the Crystal Hills Trail. Twelve miles, I said to myself. An hour from home. I can do this comfortably in four or five out-and-back hikes.
I started at the southern end, on seasonal Burnt Hill Road north of Bennettsburg. In just a few minutes I wished I had my camera, for I was walking through a gap in a stone wall that made me feel like I was hiking with my dad, back home in Rhode Island. Acorns and hickories spotted the trail. It was a green and leafy walk through the forest, with just a hint of fall to come. But after a couple of miles I broke out of the woods into grassy space by the Burnt Hill Pond, a good spot to take a seat on a boulder and indulge in some peanut butter crackers.
Pushing onward, the trail got a little rocky and little bumpy… nothing hard to manage, just enough to keep you alert. I crossed the Gorge Trail and reached the Burnt Hill Trail. Almost three miles — 2.9, to be exact. About face, and back to the car.
For my next hike I parked at Matthews Road and doubled back southward six-tenths of a mile to reach my previous stopping point, then back to Matthews and on to the north from there. Here I was crossing into a pasture… the national forest permits grazing… and the apples on a large lone tree caught the morning sun, every one of them clamoring that although it might be still be warm, fall indeed was here.
Up till now I’d been hiking in forest, but now I could see for miles off to the westward. Not to Seneca Lake — it was too low. But I could see all across the forests and fields of Hector, to the heights above Rock Stream and Dresden in Seneca’s west shore… a tremendous view. After the pasture I was back in the woods, and shortly after I reached Blueberry Patch Campground on Picnic Area Road I was at mile 4.9.
When I parked there for my next walk, the day was damp and drizzly, following a night of HEAVY rains. Veteran hiker Ed Sidote had told us that the Interloken was a wet trail. I hadn’t experienced that yet, but on this day I could see his point.
I’d had the sense to wear my L.L. Bean duck shoes instead of my New Balance sneakers, and a good move it was, too! There were long muddy stretches to navigate, and even the boardwalks were wet enough to be tricky and slippery. The brush approaching Foster Pond was soaked, and the little outlet stream swollen where you have to ford.
BUT — I walked the whole way through a yellow wood. The leaves had changed, and even though their trees were various species, they’d just about all turned yellow, together. Now MANY acorns and hickories littered my way as I pushed on to my turning-back point, the northernmost crossing of Backbone Trail. Mile 7.4.
On my next expedition I parked at Searsburg Road, went south to Backbone, and once again doubled back to the car. Then I crossed the road and passed through another gate into another pasture. For that matter, I passed through a herd of black angus, who seemed puzzled by my presence rather than otherwise. Even so I didn’t want to take anyone by surprise, so I kept up a steady chant of ho, boss… ho, boss…though of course it’s very likely that they don’t understand Rhode Island bovine anyhow.
The cattle have beaten so many paths through this pasture that I had to thrash around for a while to find the gate on the far side. When you enter through the southern gate, you’ll see a small grove of trees to your left in the field. Make like General Pickett and angle toward the trees, then the gate’s on the same line at the other side.
After a bit more hiking I was chest deep in brush and flowers, especially aster (both white and blue) and goldenrod, passing along the lovely Teeter Pond, cicadas singing out the summer. Beavers have been active here, perhaps within minutes, to judge from the pile of wood chips. It seems that this one has joined the trail maintenance volunteers, as he’s gnawing through a tree that’s fallen across the way. I have an affectionate feeling for beavers, the more so as my Mayflower ancestor teamed up with Miles Standish, John Alden, and two other guys to buy a monopoly in the Plymouth fur trade.
A few steps past Teeter Pond I found Seneca Road — mile 9.8 — and turned around.
Two days later, back to the parking area on Seneca Road (a washboardy seasonal road), and through the pasture gate into Seneca County. At first the way follows an abandoned road, along a line of maples, but then ducks into the woods — still gloriously yellow. I think of many walks over many autumns with my father, who passed away in April at 87; he’d love this one. The track is now rocky, dark, and tunnel-like, and at one point carpeted with apples. I haven’t seen much wildlife in these trips, but after half an hour or so I scare off a garter snake enjoying a patch of fall sunlight. I greet some horseback riders, and then… Parmenter Road… mile 12.0. The end.
After some water and peanut butter crackers I hoist the backpack again, and thoroughly annoy that garter snake by coming back through. A hairy woodpecker poses perfectly above me. In the long gentle slope up to the pasture I’m in that shadowy yellow tunnel again, but up ahead is the tunnel’s end, an inviting square of bright blue sky. Ten minutes across the pasture, and I’ve done the Interloken Trail, twice (think about it — once each way)… and I even beat bow season. Back to the car. On my way. Home.