Beauty in the Details

We got another beautiful day! I had decided to use it to do my fall walk-through of the trail section I maintain. It was an easy amount of work. I had time to look for interesting details. This is the best.

I'm pretty sure this is a false chanterelle. Cute.

Still on the topic of mushrooms and fungus, this is some variety- I have no idea what- but see how it's growing in sort of a net pattern? The mycelium is under the bark and it puts up fruiting bodies in the softer cracks between the plates of the bark.

The bottomland hardwood swamp is completely dry. I've seldom seen it without any pools of water. This tree decided to become a terrarium. Probably Intermediate Wood Fern.

This just made me chuckle. It's an apartment building for some critters. I wonder who lives upstairs.

The trail work was easy. My section is in good shape. I only pulled a couple of small, downed trees off the path, clipped a little, and flipped away loose sticks.

Oh, a pic of my piece of trail? Sure.

And I did laundry and some editing.

Miles hiked in 2025: 440.5
NCT miles hiked in 2025: 244.8

North Country Trail, Lake and Mason Counties, Freesoil TH to Koenig Rd and back to Tyndall Rd. 3.5 miles.

See Work Day

Late Summer Colors in the Woods

I did take a hike yesterday, but wanted to share about the quilt show then, so I saved these pictures for tonight.

First of all, green is a color. And I love it when the woods are green. I've been hiking a lot in the brown months over the last few years, so I want to be adamant about how much I love the green woods.

Not by planning, but it just happened that I got an array of primary-colored mushrooms.

Red is the Apple Bolete, or Frost's Bolete, Exsudoporus frostii. I looked back in the blog and I last saw a bunch of these in 2015. "Apple" should be easy enough to remember. They sure look like someone dropped an apple in the leaves.

If you uncover the stem, you can see that the underside of the cap is convex. It has pores not gills. That easily tells you it's a bolete. And the stem is striped/striated. It will get downright grooved as it ages.

Moving along to yellow, these are Honey Mushrooms, Armillaria mellea. They are supposedly very edible, but I have not tried them. I should... there's not much you can mistake for them.

Blue is iffy. Maybe it's purple. You'd think something that looks so distinctive would be easy to identify. Nope- there are lots of choices. Well, it may be Laccaria ochrepurpurea, Purple Laccaria. That word "ochre-purpurea" should tell you it can vary in color from a yellow-brown to purple.

I did remember to take a picture of the gills. Still not enough info, although it allowed me to eliminate a few possibilities.

For real blue, believe it or not there were a few late-blooming harebells, Campanula rotundifolia. Why "round-leaved" you ask, when the leaves are clearly narrow straps? The first true leaves that appear near the ground in spring are round. That was a nice colorful surprise.

I reported these miles yesterday.

I tried hard to stay on track with getting things done today. Did pretty well. I need to make a master list for September and then stick with it. Several deadlines coming right up. For some reason, I have a sore hip. Hope that shapes up soon!

See Frost's Bolete 2015

Getting in Some Hills

 Cathy and I, and another lady named Barb, hiked today on the south side of Ludington State Park. The north part won't be reopened for several more months.

This was partly for fun, and partly my training regimen to get ready for summer. We took one of the trails that is really hilly. Here we are on a ridge, but there is plenty of up and down to switch ridges.

These trails lead to Hamlin Lake, but I learned one new fact today. The north end of my favorite trail loop (see link below and the stone shelter) is just beyond that conifer-covered point. Cathy has spent time on the lake in a boat (I haven't much), so she knew that fact.

More hilly sections.

And I found some white oak acorns that the squirrels and deer hadn't eaten over the winter. A little bitter, but edible. It's a great survival food. (The red oak acorns are truly bitter. You'd have to be desperate to eat them.)

And here's the best news. We did 4.25 hilly miles. I carried a 17-pound pack, and I wasn't too tired to do anything else when I got home. I'll get there!

Miles hiked in 2025: 138.1

Ludington State Park- various trails south of Hamlin Lake. 4.25 miles

See My Favorite Ludington State Park Loop

Swingin' In the Rain

  Today, Cathy and I hiked 9 miles on the North Country Trail in some moderate drizzle. It really wasn't bad at all. But it was gray enough that what little color is in the trees didn't really show to good effect. We weren't singin', but maybe we were walking fast enough to call it swingin'

This was the best find of the day. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a pretty toad. It's legs are camouflage, and its body is brown. Believe me, it was really hard to see in the leaves.

Where we hiked, there is a small area of prairie, and here are the seedheads of Showy Goldenrod.

The moss was bright green, and a few leaves also had bright colors

And, just because I rarely do this, I'll show you the spore print from yesterdays Butter-foot Bolete. I always hate to collect mushrooms in the wild because I want other people to enjoy them. But this was in my yard. Yellow-brown to olive brown... so that probably confirms the ID.

My NCT miles for 2021 are at 414. Cathy has 78.5 towards Hike 100.

North Country Trail, Lake County, Bowman Lake TH south 4.5 miles and back.

In other news: I worked on trail food. I worked on another hike project, and finished one book-promotion related project. I get to cross off a big thing! Probably one more tomorrow, too. I still have one thing to do this evening. 30 BIG ITEMS to do (32 done) and 24 small ones to do (14 done). 32 days to go.

See Putin' In Some Miles

Butter-Foot Bolete

  Another new-to-me mushroom that has popped up all over my yard this week. I'm pretty sure this is Boletus auripes, the butter-foot bolete. I'm showing you the underside of the cap first, so you can see the pores. The pores, instead of gills, is what tells me it's a bolete.

These can get bigger, but the ones in my yard are hunkered down in the grass. I noticed them while hunting for a clothespin that the wind catching a sheet like a sail had sent soaring many feet away. Here's what they look like in the grass. The tops sometimes become brown.

When you break the cap the color is yellow clear through, and the bruised flesh doesn't stain any other color.

The stem can be reticulated- netted or broken into a patchwork design. A giraffe's spots are reticulated. So, I think that's a yes.

I only found one other yellow bolete in the guides, and it has one of those fat stems, so it's not a good match for these. That's two new boletes in my yard this summer!

In other news: I was having a tired day today, but that doesn't mean I can rest. It only means I get to work while tired. Laundry, trail food, of course another trip to stores and errands, worked on the trailer (and already need something else that I didn't get today). I did parts of many projects, but can you believe I don't get to cross off a single thing? Grrr. But I may finish one yet tonight. All too often, I get to a place on a particular job that has to wait for X, or to let Y dry, or requires person Z to respond... so I can't continue until that piece is complete. If I finish something tonight, I'll get to count it for tomorrow. Can I make myself do some more things this evening? 31 BIG ITEMS to do (31 done) and 24 small ones to do (14 done). 33 days to go.

See Bicolor Bolete

Little Humid Walk

  I finished some errands a little early for bell choir so I did a short walk in the woods by the Methodist Church. Very humid and weirdly warm for October. Lots of mushrooms! This is some polypore. Nothing special, but it was looking quite handsome.

Best find is another of the purple mushrooms. I'm pretty sure this is Heliotrope Webcap. Blotchy with yellow and really slimy. Cortinarius heliotropicus. Definitely not one of the purple ones I've shown you before. Second guess is Purple Coincap. Of course it seems to be right for some features of each but not all.

Here is the underside. No sign of the "web"- the remnant of the veil, but it may have dropped off.

How about a cute yellow one? I have no idea what this one is. Too many choices.

These mushrooms at the base of a tree are past their prime, but they almost look like flowers.

Got a nice picture of a black squirrel.

And the leaves are starting to change- quite late this year- the sassafras are getting yellow.

Methodist Church trails, Ludington, MI. 2 miles

In other news: I edited all day. I did a few errands and went to bell choir practice. I didn't get to cross off a single item. Big List is still at 73 entries with 28 crossed off, leaving 45 to go in 49 days. Chop, chop!

See Purple Mushrooms

Who Writes the Music?

  On the hike Tuesday, I found a few Golden Spindle fungi. These are easily recognized, Clavulinopsis fusiformis, one of the coral fungi.

But, I can never see them without thinking of one version of the song "I Know Where I'm Going." I have a recording of that by the New Christy Minstrels. It's a traditional folk song and the words get massaged every time someone records it. However, I love that particular version, and I used it as the closing for the program I used to give about hiking the North Country Trail. I used that program until I had finished the trail, and then I made a new program.

Part of the chorus goes "Who writes the music in the quiet summer morning?" I used this picture of Golden Spindles, taken at Pictured Rocks in 1999 for that line of the song. The fungi, reaching to dance with the lycopodium, always sang to me. Do you find nature singing to you?

By the way, the song ends "I'm going where you go, and you'll be there beside me. The lovelight in your eyes is all I need to guide me. Oo-oo-oo. I know where I'm going." Coupled with pictures of happy hikers, this song made a powerful conclusion to the program.

In other news: I edited, I wrote a chapter, I got the flat tire off the mower and loaded in the car so I can take it to be fixed. I went to town, and I figured something out on the trailer. A friend stopped by for a while. Sounds like a lot, but I still had time to do some reading for fun. Good day.

See Sterling Marsh Again

Bowman Semi-Primitive Area - Glacial Goodies

 
Today I hiked about 8 miles through one of my favorite local places, the Bowman Semi-Primitive Area. It's within the Manistee National Forest, and includes 3 miles of the North Country Trail. Because it's so special, it's protected from motorized use. You can not even drive to the lake, which keeps it pretty nice.

I did a loop of the NCT and then the Bowman Trails. This is Bowman Lake. It's gorgeous in any season. It's a glacial kettle hole lake- formed when a block of ice calved off the retreating glacier. It has no inlet or outlet, but has remained a lake because it is spring fed.



There are several other kettle holes in the area, but they are dry most of the year. The second largest one did have some frozen standing water today. Notice the dark brown vegetation in the bottom. That is leatherleaf- a wetland shrub which indicates that it's wet close to the surface year round.



One of the things I love about this area is that it has just enough topography to be really interesting. It's full of glacial kames. These are little pointy hills deposited by water dripping out the bottom of the glacier. Just like letting wet sand run out of your hand to make a little pointed pile, but on a much larger scale.



It's hard to tell this shot is looking downhill when the previous one was looking up to a hilltop, but the trail here wanders beside and over these rolling humps.



You might think there would be a lot of glacially deposited rocks, called erratics. There are some, but most aren't very big. This is about the biggest I've seen there.



Here is the other type of geologic feature. This is a bowl-shaped depression, rounded rather than V-shaped as the kettles are. No leatherleaf growing in the bottom. That indicates that it's probably a blow-out, a place where wind picked up the loose sand and just sculpted a bowl.



One thing I thought was really interesting because I hadn't noticed it before. With no leaves, you can see for a long way through the trees. That blue ridge in the far distance is the ridge beyond the floodplain of the Pere Marquette River, on the other side.



And a few pretties- some kind of polypore fungus. I liked the yellow and creamy bands.



It finally got a degree over 40! The sun showed up at the end of the day. Always welcome.



And a lovely reflection at the edge of Bowman Lake.



Hike 100 Challenge for 2020 is at 53 miles.

In other news: I wrote a news article in the morning and did laundry.

56th St to 40th St on the North Country Trail, Lake County, MI, and then return via the Bowman Lake Trail, Leatherleaf Loop and Bowman ski trail. Total about 8 miles total

See A Day on the Trail with Annie