Leaving north from Tok on a cloudy September day, I was on my way to Fairbanks for a short-term fieldwork stint and to visit friends. The weather had been clear and crisp but on the day I left a rainy weather system was moving in. Little did I know, then, that I would be alternately rained and snowed on every day for the next seven days.
One week later, the rain stops. I had a free weekend to go hiking with friends, picking cranberries and harvesting chaga.
This day was the fall equinox. Even though we still have twelve hours of daylight, the quality of the light is noticeably different now than it was in summer. The angle of the sun is much lower, and even at noon the shadows are long.
Most of the birch have already dropped their leaves, but the aspen hold on to theirs a little longer.
We saw plentiful spruce grouse along the trail. Sometimes the males tried to display, confused by the shorter days into thinking it was spring.
Cranberries are the most abundant in black spruce forest, where they get plenty of light because of the thin tree canopy.
Paint-by-number birch trees
While in Fairbanks, I was lucky enough to help with hare trapping research in Bonanza Creek. We set live traps in black spruce forest, hoping to put GPS collars on a few hares.
This year has been a very good year for red squirrels, presumably because there has been a large cone crop for the past couple of years. As a result, the squirrels have been building the largest middens I have ever seen! We saw several of these 3 ft tall piles scattered around the forest.
A snowshoe hare, young-of-the-year.
In the morning, ice was forming on small puddles.
I really enjoyed visiting my old favorite running trails around Fairbanks. Here, the young spruce catch the falling leaves like confetti in their branches.
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