Trail Time – Signs of Fall
September arrived on the Gunflint Trail with some of the best cloud-watching days I can remember. Puffy white clouds traveled across the deep-blue sky from west to east, complementing the warm days with one of the best shows on earth. Every season has its own drama: July was a tense month with smoke from the Little Knife fire blanketing parts of the Upper Trail and making its way down to the shore for a few days. That has all passed; the fire danger is at moderate level once again and the rain helps everyone up and down the Trail rest a little easier. I cannot overstate how much we on the Trail appreciate the hard work of the firefighters, both those from far away and those that live near and volunteer to fight fires and rescue sick and injured wilderness travelers. They are the quiet heroes who might be shopping next to you at the grocery store, or having a beer at Poplar Haus or Trail Center. Remarkable humans disguised as ordinary folks. We know them as neighbors.
Signs of fall are all around us now: the moose maple leaves are turning yellow and gold and crimson. At Maple Hill the sugar maples are just starting to announce the change in seasons with bright splashes of red, gold and orange blazing in a sea of green. While aspen leaves generally turn yellow, looking like gold coins fluttering in the wind, we spotted one aspen that thinks it’s a maple tree, adorned with yellow, orange and coral-colored leaves. You would think that it’s the cooler temperatures that cause the changing of the colors, but the phenomenon is more related to decreased sunlight.
As we approach the autumnal equinox on September 22, the shorter daylight hours trigger deciduous trees to prepare for winter. The tree itself starts forming a barrier between each leaf and its branch, cutting off the supply of nutrients to the leaves and making simple sugars stay in the leaves instead of traveling to the rest of the tree. Three things: less daylight, less nourishment and less water make the green chlorophyll in leaves break down. When the chlorophyll fades, other colors start to show. Here’s the astonishing part: the colors were always there! Orange, red, coral, gold, burgundy and yellow were hiding under a mask of summer’s green. Once chlorophyll is gone, the tannin in the leaves turns them brown; anthocyanin is responsible for red and burgundy and purple leaves; carotenoid causes the brilliant orange and yellow we associate with fall.
Fireweed gives us another sign of summer’s passing. It’s also known as rosebay or great willowherb. It is edible and medicinal. It grows its flowers in clusters from the bottom up. When the flowers reach the top, you know that summer is nearing its end. If I think it’s too early for summer to be over, I can usually find a blossom that’s still going, assuring me that we still have some summer left. Basically, it’s like looking for a weather forecast until I find one that appeals to me. I met a woman once who made jelly from fireweed blossoms and rose hips. She called it Firerose jelly and it was the most beautiful orangey pink, like a jellified jewel in a jar. All winter long you could have a little summer on your toast.
September is one of my favorite times to go into the Boundary Waters. The bugs are mostly gone, days can be sunny and warm, although I’ve had trips where it rained every day. Rain never spoiled a trip for Lars and I — it just made life more interesting. This month is the anniversary of our honeymoon trip to Lac Lacroix in the Boundary Waters, where the weather was an everything bagel. We had beautiful blue skies and sun as we paddled north though the wild rice beds on the Nina Moose River. We had fog at Boulder Bay and rain at Warrior Hill. We had an epic snowstorm that seemingly came out of nowhere at the Bottle Rapids, where the wind was blowing so hard and so loudly that we had to shout to coordinate our paddling as the wild waves tossed our canoe around in a thick swirl of snowflakes.
Today is one of those September days where the weather changes from hour to hour, if not minute to minute — now rainy, now cloudy, now pale blue skies followed by more gray clouds spitting rain. It’s excellent weather for mushrooms. They are popping up all over the woods, both those that are delicious and those you should enjoy only with your eyes. I went on a chanterelle hunt down a forest path with a cliff on one side that had water slowly trickling down through the duff and moss to form a pool on the forest floor. The wind was gusting, the treetops up above were swaying, but in this private green sheltered space the wind moved lazily. Newly fallen leaves of gold, plum and peach glowed at my feet. Yellow aspen leaves littered the ground. I think it is no accident that the aspen leaves at this time of year are the same color as chanterelles. Maybe it’s protective coloration — a sort of camouflage for the mushrooms. By walking carefully through the understory and peeking under the leaves of a ground cover plant (maybe wild ginger?) I found a few good chanterelles to carry home, feeling like I had found the gold at the end of the rainbow.
– Marcia Roepke, on the Gunflint Trail
