Stay frosty and enjoy our fall

There really wasn't all that much frost.

Given how chilly it was when I left the house, I expected to see hillsides covered in white. But no, it was mostly in the lowest areas of the ditches and in the places where the sun casts shadows late in the day. Out in the open, even in the pre-dawn chill, no frost at all.

In fact, I didn't find any until I was down in the foothill valleys over toward Dogpound and Bergen. The golden light of morning had already swept across the hills by then, lighting deer out for their morning meal and pushing through the thin haze to light the mountains on the far horizon. I expected to see the deer's breath as they grazed but, no, though chilly, it was already too warm for that.

But there was frost. I found grass covered with it deep in the valley shade and there was plenty of it over along Dogpound Creek. It coated dried out clover blossoms and wild rose leaves. The wooden planks of the bridge over the creek were white with it.

But the sun was well above the horizon now and starting to hit the crystals. Mist began to form above the creek's waters as the sun warmed the air and moisture started to drip from the melting frost on the leaves. I could actually watch the frost disappear as the sun's radiant energy spread through the valley. Ten minutes was all it took for the all the frost to be gone.

Except from the bridge planks. Walking over to look down into the creek's flowing waters, I slipped on the frosty deck and nearly dropped my camera. Maybe shoulda waited another few minutes.

But then I might have missed the owl.

I saw it fly out from the roadside trees and land on a fence post just ahead of me and I at first thought it was one of the many juvenile hawks circling around. But no, it was a great grey owl.

Though they are fairly common, their camouflage makes them pretty hard to spot when they're in the forest, so it was a pretty lucky thing to find one out in the open like this.

Great greys are pretty focused when they're hunting so this one all but ignored me as it sat on the post and looked down at the grass below to listen for the rustle of a mouse or vole. I really hoped it might hear one and pounce on it but just sat and listened, flew ahead to another post and started listening again.

It did look over at me a couple of times, turning its head and locking those bright yellow eyes on my lens until, after a few minutes, it flew back into the trees again and was gone. But watching it out in the open like that was such a treat.

I carried on west past Winchell Lake and on through Water Valley and into the foothills up around Grease Creek. I was hoping to find a bit of early fall colour but the aspens and poplars are just barely starting to turn.

The willows, though, they're another story.

The Harold Creek valley was awash with yellow. The willows that cram the spaces between the bends of the creek were every shade from pale green to nearly orange and they filled the valley with a golden glow. With blue sky above and the bright willows below it was a glorious sight.

A dozen young redtail hawks were hunting over the creek, swooping back and forth as kingfishers flew by and flocks of robins looked for bugs in the bankside grass. Cattle wandered around along the road, their mooing echoing in the still, chill air. A whitetail doe, all alone, crossed the road and sprinted for the trees and as I followed her flight I saw a pair of wild horses disappearing into the forest behind her.

I would have happily spent the morning right there had it not been for the logging trucks. Trees are being taken down somewhere to the west and there was a near constant stream of tree-filled semis coming one direction and empty trucks going the other. Not only did it make approaching corners a bit of a sphincter-clencher, the dust kicked up was starting to fill the valley. So I moved on.

It's mushroom time in the forest out here and I was curious to see how they were doing given the dry summer we've had. Most of a mushroom's body, in fact, the vast majority of it, lives in the soil and spreads throughout the forest floor. The mushroom itself is just a spore-dispersal mechanism.

And in a damp year, those mechanisms are all over the place. But this has been far from a damp year. So I headed to a familiar patch of forest over by Burnt Timber Creek to have a look.

The last time I was here, back about two months ago, the forest floor was green but pretty dry. The flowers were nice and the greens and tans of the forest looked quite lovely in the light tinted by all the forest fire smoke in the air. But the moss was crunchy, the lichens crispy. And mushrooms were in short supply.

But it had rained either overnight or sometime in the last couple of days and the now moss was damp, the lichens leathery. And there were mushrooms all over the place.

Though not quite as abundant as they had been in other years. At least that was my impression. I walked through the forest looking for them and found lots but they were in scattered patches and those patches seemed small.

But still, it was nice to lie down on that damp moss and smell the earthy scents carried on the breeze that was shaking the tree tops and scattering loose spruce needles over me. Spider silk shimmered in patches of sunlight while the greens of the moss were nearly electric and complemented by the soft mochas and tans of the mushrooms.

And then there were the leaves. A lot of the small, leafy, forest-floor plants have gained their fall colours, some yellow but most in varying shades of pink, red and purple, all of them glowing bright in the patches of light.

There were berries, too, tiny things half the size of a saskatoon or chokecherry. I've noticed them many times before at this time of year but I'm not entirely certain what they're called. Near as I can tell, they are some sort of small cranberry. I decided to refer to them as patridgeberries, but that's probably wrong.

They are pretty little things, though.

I found more mushrooms along the roadsides, big patches of shaggy-manes turning black and dripping as they shed their spores, and rings of small, white mushrooms in the grass along the edge of thee woods. Over by a small creek there were fungi that were cup-shaped, their upturned faces holding water and their gills exposed.

A very light rain was starting to fall now, the wind bringing leaden clouds in from the west. But that just enhanced the colours, the soft light making the greens and yellows jump. The moss and lichens were now even brighter here and the reds of the rose and bunchberry leaves really stood out against the rest of the spectrum.

Spruce needles floated and twisted in the current of the little creek and as I was photographing them I heard the thwock-thwock-thwock of what turned out to be a threetoed woodpecker. Long time since I've seen one of them. The sound added a nice rhythm to the tinkle of the creek and the hiss of wind in the treetops overhead.

The rain followed me as I headed down the Burnt Timber valley and crossed over to Fallen Timber Creek. It wasn't much more than a heavy mist but as the roads were already damp, it was enough to make them slick. Stopping by a beaver pond for a quick picture, I stepped out of the trucklet and nearly slid down the ditch.

But as I did, a fish jumped and I saw it clearly enough to see that it was a small brook trout. Gonna have to remember that spot.

The drizzle stuck with me as I passed Cremona and Water Valley but I finally got ahead of it on a ridge just east of Dogpound Creek. I paused there to look back toward where I'd been.

The field in front of me lay stubble-covered and yellow while the clouds overhead were a steel grey. In between sat a farm yard and beyond that, the mountains stood in a jagged blue line.

The grass in the ditch and the leaves on the aspens were still green but the breeze that shook the was cool. It felt like an autumn wind.

Which is, I guess, what it is. We've reached the equinox once more and in just a few days, the dark hours will fill more of the day than the bright. Fall, at least on the calendar, is here.

But that doesn't mean that our summer-like days are all gone. No, there are still nice, warm days to come, days to get out and enjoy all those fall colours that are just down the road. Will the nights be chilly? Sure, some of them. Maybe even chilly enough to freeze things up a little bit.

But for the next little while, at least, there probably won't be all that much frost.