Fall Day

It was windy, the sky a pewter shield, leaves still tumbling from the red leafed mature maple at the head of the street, just before the trailhead leading to the ravine. Cold enough that we need gloves for comfort in this outing, not merely jackets. Cold enough that even our two little dogs wear their sweaters.

Even from the street approaching the ravine we were aware of the raucous celebration of crows. Barely into the ravine proper there was a Pileated woodpecker, its brilliant red tuft following its headstrong assault on an old poplar trunk. The sheer size of the bird never fails to amaze us, along with its disinterest in our proximity.

Descending the first long hill, the trail is laden with leaves and pine needles, scattered there a week earlier, leaving the trees all about dark and stark, unclothed and ready for winter. It's such a sere time of year, with little to soften the rude unclothing of the trees.

We're able to see far into the woods now, bereft of their green screen. And looking up, we see the crows mobbing, circling about, a group of jubilant juveniles.

These leaves we tread through are dry and crisp and scatter as our little dogs patter through them. They've lost their brilliant colouration, and present in shades of browns and greys, crumbling already into their destined forest compost.

The trail undulates, lurching unexpectedly uphill, bypassing that section of the old trail that had steadily eroded, though there's still a sheered, narrow path serving as a short-cut. We don't trust that it will remain there long. We've watched, over the years as the hillside has succumbed to erosion, hastened by its clay composition.

The wind roars, rustling those leaves still left on tree tops, scant though they are now. That delightfully lengthy Indian Summer now departed, we're into fall renascent, with its inevitable freezing nights and frosty mornings.

Throughout those areas of the trail where bicycles have dispersed the leaves, one sees the unmistakable signs of late fall on the exposed earth; frozen at a shallow depth at night, thawing by mid-day. The result a wet and slippery mess.

A nuthatch makes its circuitous route around the trunk of an old pine, offering its rubber-ducky language to us, in company of chickadees hopping from tree branch to trunk, then lifting off for a short excursion further along the trail.

We approach that portion of the trail system where an extended vale of maples have more recently dropped their bright yellow leaves. There, and along the trail to the right, those leaves in yellow and faint pink blush, thickly carpet the area, a treat for our eyes, a reminder of the season we've lost, as we shuffle through their brightness, their textured layer.

This is a yearly treat, one we forget until the time returns when we're again confronted by its transitory beauty. And there, where the presence of pines outnumber those of spruce, oak and maple, the trail is heavily littered with pine needles, a soft rusty-coloured mat where our apricot poodle is lost to the eye, blending so perfectly, but for the little red sweater that holds him apart.