Notes From the Field

Autumn takes a hard turn…

The low pressure system that for the last week sat stationary over the lower Great Lakes and brought miserable weather to the midsection of the country while spinning persistent showers up along the south shore of Superior has finally been nudged on. Clouds that for days gently cloaked the tops of the Bessemer Bluffs greeted dawn this morning as fierce portents -- roiled, fractured and ominous. You didn’t have to pay really close attention in order to know the jig was up.

I began yesterday by canoeing one of my favorite lakes in the Ottawa National Forest and if I’ve ever spent a prettier morning there I don’t recall it. Overcast with just a hint of fog, the water was as glass and mirrored the colors of the forest that rings it.

The ripples on the surface came from my canoe. They radiated out across the entire lake. And either the intense yellow trees about fried the sensors on my Toy Canon SLR. Either that or I’ve not yet figured out how best to use it.

Later in the day I packed in to Nonesuch and there found autumn in all its quiet splendor, fallen leaves dressing the hard black stone of the old mine's crumbling foundations. Quietude unknown in any city.

By the time I walked back out to the car I was warm and moist with sweat. It was a joy to scoop handfuls of ice water from the bottom of my cooler and splash it over me. Did some good work while there, I think. Though as is always the case with film you don’t find out you haven’t until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Regardless, it was about as fine a day as could be had.

I suppose it’s true in all big sky country, but for most of us it’s rare to plainly see a season turn upon a single day and so this one did today. By midmorning, the breeze had picked up and the clouds began to spit. By afternoon the storm was full blown and it was 48 degrees, the wind a steady 20/25 mph from the NW with gusts I’d guess as high as forty.

Ravens hung in the air like kites. Geese, for all their squawking persistence flew backwards trying to seek safe haven in a field, their big heavy bodies caught up in the wind. Trees roar, when bent so far.

It’s tough to tell just how much rain fell in horizontal sheets. It can’t be enough, as the region’s been locked in drought for a long time now, but maybe it’ll feed the rivers enough so that fish can finally come in from the big lake and do their autumn thing.

Time for that grows short. As does time for everything that thrives this side of freezing.

The rain slackened with sunset and a great hole appeared near the horizon to the west. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight”, they say. We’ll see. The weatherman can’t ever seem to get it right up here, maybe old sailors can. What’s true is that clouds still race across the heavens.

I’m looking forward to roaming the woods tomorrow, as what leaves can fall will have fallen to cover the forest floor with fast fading brightness and everywhere it’ll be different than it was even just yesterday. No matter how bucolic some days going forward may yet be, this place has today turned its face toward winter and now, there’s no going back.