Yesterday, after the long Labour Day weekend, the trails in the ravine were abruptly deserted. Not another soul to be seen anywhere in the forest, neither man nor beast, as it were. Other than us, that is, Jackie and Jillie leading the way and we two faithfully following our masters. A lovely day and cooler now by far than throughout the month of July and into August when a moderating trend leaving the really hot and humid summer days behind us for this year, arrived.

But there are still some berries waiting to be picked among the thimbleberry and blackberry canes. And the wild apple trees have shouldered a bumper crop this year. Now, no ramble through the woodland trails where we come across apple trees is complete without shared apples between us. Jackie and Jillie tend to get the lions' share, actually, and we just scant nibbles; as much as they permit us.

It has recently struck us how forlorn one of the oldest spruces in the forest now appears. When we first saw it decades ago it was a giant among the forest trees. There were two thickly sturdy leaders, the separation starting on the trunk about ten feet up. A magnificent old tree, green-needled and beautiful. And then about fifteen years ago we noticed great gaping holes just above the juncture of the leader and the trunk, and large wood shards around one of the leaders, fallen to the forest floor.

The work of a pileated woodpecker; one forest giant's predation on another. Of course the woodpecker wouldn't have been attracted to the spruce if the tree itself hadn't been invaded by some kind of insect pest's grubs under the bark that the bird felt entitled to forage for. Eventually that leader was circled at its base on the trunk of the giant spruce with those huge holes pileated woodpeckers leave in their wake. The tree was disfigured, but more than that it had become vulnerable.

So much so that we were shocked one day while hiking through the trails to see that huge leader cracked off after a night of heavy winds accompanying wild thunderstorms. That huge limb now lay beside the spruce, a sad sight indeed. This was the second time we'd seen something like this; a large old pine elsewhere int he forest had been circled with pileated woodpecker excavations and a micro-tornado had swept through the forest not long afterward, taking down that tree, leaving a lone snag where a tall, large tree had once proudly stood, along with a number of other pines in the destructive pathway of the microburst of energy.

Still, it had never occurred to us that the giant spruce wouldn't recover from the shock of losing one of its leaders. But we see now that over time it has. Its far-reaching branches, once thriving and green are now stark, dark and bare. The only needles left on the struggling spruce are those at the very top of the tree where the crown reaches above the forest canopy toward the sun. Some of the holes in the trunk are now the abode of red squirrels, but the tree is in its final throes of life, that seems clear enough, and it's beyond sad.

We noted the proliferation of jewelweed now in abundant flowering on the floor of the forest just above the water line of the creek, below the banks of the waterway where we can just manage to spot their bright little heads from the trail above. Jewelweed loves damp conditions so it flourishes there, far more than in other places alongside the trail, where the forest floor is wet mostly during the spring months and the plants there flower really sparsely.

Fall colour is slowly and steadily creeping into the landscape; that inexorable change from summer to fall. Before long, the limited areas where foliage have precipitated their colour change will be transformed, with the entire forest reflecting shades of gold, burnt orange, pink and red.

And one last Himalayan balsam orchid, a bloom-laggard, compared to its taller cousins, was found to be in bloom, its bright pink flowers glowing in the sun, surrounded by spent and drying Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod.