New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Full fall splender in Epsom.

Monday 10/11/2004

What a wonderful view the Suncook River has provided the last several days! Absolutely beautiful. We are very close to peak color here in Epsom this Columbus Day. I can't help but stare and marvel at the Suncook River and the hills beyond. Everything is painted with brilliant reds, oranges and yellows. Even the dark river burns as if a column of molting lava as it sweeps past my house. The last two evenings even the sky has turned colors of pink, purple and hues of the other end of the spectrum at last light.

Thursday and Friday of last week I was stocking pheasants again in Hopkinton, Henniker, and Weare on Thursday, then back to Brentwood, Exeter and Strafford on Friday. What glorious days they were filled with leaves changing by the day, sometimes seeming by the minute as I traveled.

Saturday we had a family "work party" at my moms a mile south of me in Epsom. My brother Alan and I toiled a couple hours or so in her huge garden. I cut her several rows of corn stalks and we rototilled the soil and seeded rye for the winter. I love the smell of freshly tilled soil any time of year. It seems warm and fresh when I till her garden each spring and seems to have a cooler more sullen smell in the fall. I did spot a huge gravid female preying mantis that I took some photos of before releasing her today.

This last week has plummeted us into fall rather quickly following the first frost of the fall; a rather hard one at that. Despite that it killed all the perishable plants such as tomatoes impatience and such, there has been a steady calling of crickets each evening. I've spotted a number of grasshoppers as well. It won't be long before they too will wilt into the earth like the plants. No wonder fall air has such a pungent fragrance. It must be the smell of death of so many living things. At least plants and insects. The air is so full of sounds, smells and colors this time of year that it's hard to imagine the stark contrast of empty cold winter air that is odorless, all white and silent save for creaks on trodden snow.