“Since you could sing all summer, you can dance all winter.”

–The Ant to the Grasshopper

At the end of July, I drove down a dirt road forested on one side and a clearing on the other. This was the same clearing I wrote about before where there was a burn and the grass in early May was extremely green, an attraction for many deer. But now I looked out to see browns and tans much like a ripened wheat field. The grass had already grown up, born seeds, and died under the hot summer sun. Their mission was over and they’d provided for their continuation into the next year.

Starting in August, I began to hear a ping on the roof of the neighbor’s barn. Despite the prevalance of vermin and disease, oak trees are still one of the most common trees in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The ping I heard was from falling acorns hitting a steel roof. They weren’t ripe yet, but a handful fall anyways.

This year, I also did some backpacking and walked 130 miles down various trails. Around August I started to see ripening berries around the trail. Many berry bushes thrive in the partial sunlight along narrow trails. As they started to ripen I usually found time to pick a few and eat them. The black cherry trees are also bearing their fruit. These are tiny cherries and black cherries tend to grow amongst young trees.

Right now the time of growth is ending and the time of harvest is about to begin. Since the seasons in Michigan repeat fairly closely year by year, even something as myopic as a human can learn to see the future. For those that look, or know what to look for, the signs of the next season appear about as soon as each season begins. Everything we see unfold before us has been prepared for months in advance.

Wild animals don’t struggle to see the signs, because they are the ones leaving the clues. In springtime, the deer were moving regularly looking for new food in open fields and the edges of large roads that get lots of sunlight. However, as summer progressed the sun baked, dried, and toughened these plants while areas of partial shade sprouted green as ever. This food was much more plentiful and the deer had little reason to move widely. This was good due to the presence of new fawns. Instead, they set up small ranges around forest clearings and narrow roads awaiting the falling acorns. For the bucks, late summer and early fall are some of their last oportunities to prepare for winter before mating season begins.

For the bears, late summer and early fall are even more urgent as in late fall they will enter hibernation for almost half a year. The process of fattening themselves for hibernation is called hyperphagia, and their entire days revolve around eating, drinking water, and resting to digest food. The primary natural food sources for bears during hyperphagia are mast crops: soft mast (berries) and hard mast (nuts). However, in Michigan hunters’ baits are another extremely common food source. Generally, hunters feed way more bears than what they end up shooting, if any.

Beavers will also transition their behaviors about this time. All summer they have been building or repairing their dams, lodges, and bank dens. For many young beavers, they may have been building from scratch. At the same time, trees were growing and extending their branches and have many young tender branch tips. These branch tips and the cambium layer under the bark are a food source for beaver. The beaver will fell these trees, cut these branches off, and sink them into feed piles under the water. This way they will be able to swim under the ice and access food all winter.

While I was hiking all summer, I often walked across groups of young ruffed grouse flitting on their weak wings short distances through the tangles of green leaves. But these birds are now almost indistiguisable from adults and their flights are powerful. At the same time, less and less food will be found in the forest. Soon, their mothers’ territories will no longer support the grown birds. Before summer officially ends, these birds will be driven out of their mothers territory and some will survive to stumble onto their own territory. All the while, the victorious males of previous years are prepared to drum their wings to warn them to stay clear of theirs.

And some humans are ahead of the seasons as well, whether it’s due to recognizing the natural signs or simply the dates on the calendar. Children and young adults return to school. Farmers are reconfiguring their machinery for the fall harvest. Hunters are dusting off their hunting gear. At the same time, the throngs of rural Michigan businesses involved in the summer outdoor recreation and tourism industry are putting their gear into storage. The same can be said for many campers, hikers, and kayakers.

I’m not sure the ending of any season causes as many mixed emotions as the end of summer. While many people claim to love the shoulder seasons, I think everyone is a little sad to see summer go.