Wind enveloped and dominated as I entered the dark at Hessie trailhead. Surely it’d stop as the sun came up. What were those flecks of moisture? Once again I’d checked the weather, but failed to check for wind. Colorado weather reports should start with wind. When active, wind overpowers the other elements.
I hike at dawn to increase my wildlife encounters. A coyote amongst the beaver ponds, a busy beaver on a beeline in low light, an elk shortcutting on a human trail, a moose stopping to look both ways before it steps across the same. When early and lucky, a weasel hunting amongst the pika, a bobcat moved along by shouting jays or a bear bulking up on berries for hibernation. Dawn is better than dusk ‘cos the tardy are visible.
Critters who rely upon sense of smell for their safety don’t like wind. They cannot trust that sense in the confusing swirls; they can be surprised too easily. They bed down early and stay bedded. Nothing is out this morning, nothing is moving.
The flecks of moisture multiply, and grow. Drizzle becomes rain becomes a downpour. I can no longer push through this, I take shelter to save some part of me from being soaked through. The rain is cold, bone chilling cold to the point where long-healed bone breaks ache. Cold but invigorating.
Everything is moving, everything is in constant motion. Needles fall all around, littering the ground. Leaves fall all around, carpeting the ground. Trees quake. Wind forces its way through the trees with the sound of a small passing locomotive. Season change is in the air, and all over the ground.
The smells are rich; full, pungent and complex … unusual for Colorado; more commonly dry and lacklustre to the nose. Enhanced, and maybe dispersed, by the chill mist tumbling the churning and splashing mountain stream. Wet, damp, a subtle combination of rotting timbers and sodden leaves, maybe even the peat from high above, but also new growth and life. Oh, to capture that smellscape, it conveys the energy of mountain life.
Tall grasses – red-green for fall – shake and rattle in the breeze to compete with aspens for the most beautiful presentation of chlorophyll breakdown. Aspens have fall majesty, but my eye often gets drawn to those translucent deep reds of grasses.
A burst of movement. Surely a flock of evening grosbeaks darting up into the sky, startled and splitting to evade a real or imagined predator? No, one more batch of quaking aspen leaves – large, round and bright yellow – loosed and lifted high into the air by an updraught. One more frame of the animation as summer landscape transforms into winter through fall.
I took a moment to sit in a clearing enjoying the sights, sounds, smells while ducking another squall of rain that bordered sleet. (No doubt it was participating in depositing the fresh snow up above.) Morning light is glorious as it filters through the foliage, but fall morning light is beyond spectacular through fall foliage. I soaked it up.
No wildlife encounters but I encountered nature throughout, was enveloped in nature more powerfully than I expected. Invigorating.
Adam Jack 