Early October Colors in Quehanna Wild Area

It was the first week with my new work schedule, under which I will now have every Friday off. This is cause for great celebration, as you may imagine. The weather was to be lovely on both Thursday and Friday; so I marked Thursday as a vacation day, and my husband and I headed to the Quehanna Wild Area to check out the status of the changing foliage colors.

Along the main roads, the color was still just about 5 to 10 percent overall. No great shakes, actually; nothing dramatic. But there are some places where the color is like what you see in this picture: pretty much peak for that individual area. You may need to walk a bit to see it, though.

We had decided to car camp this time. The past three or four times we've been out, we've gone backpacking. There is a certain coolness factor to backpacking, mostly in that once you get where you are going, you are fully self-contained in the wilderness, which is a neat feeling.

If you enjoy solitude, backpacking may just be for you, as you are unlikely to run into others in the back country. But there's that whole business of carrying 40 pounds or so on your back like a pack horse that some people (other than my husband, who truly doesn't seem to mind it) don't find quite so charming.

Car camping is much easier. You toss your camping gear in the back seat of the car, your hiking boots and fold-up bag chairs and cooler in the trunk, and you're good to go. When you arrive at your destination, you pull the car in and set up camp. Voila!

Your car becomes a storage area and a place to hang out. Anything you don't want to get damp overnight (for there is plenty of dampness to be had these many misty mornings), you might put in the car. A down side to car camping is that you may be near enough to a road to encounter other people.

When we go car camping, we tend to make numerous short day hikes instead of one long backpack. So we made several stops, walking around a bit and exploring the Quehanna Wild Area. We walked down one long, golden corridor lined with yellow leaves, the ground crunchy and brown with them, the sun lighting them up like candles.

We saw quite a few butterflies - monarchs, pearl crescents, a mourning cloak - on what turned out to be a beautiful, blue-sky afternoon. In this one area where we hiked, there was a little pond just great for reflections, and in those warm and sunny waters, amorous newts* cavorted, with nothing but love on their minds!

When our hiking was done for the day, we got in the car and headed for our campsite, where we set up our gear and had a bite to eat. Around 8:15 pm, a single elk bugled in the clearing below us, unexpectedly close: a whistle that turned into a snort and then a grunt and ended in a scream. A wild sound unlike no other, it made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

A tiny moon rose over the trees. As the last light left the Quehanna Wild Area, the colors of the sky in the distance over the Valleys of the Susquehanna turned rich and jewel-like. I got in my tent, lay my head down on my pillow, and was almost instantly asleep:

Good night, Quehanna.

Good night, butterflies.

Good night, colorful trees.

Good night, bugling elk.

Good night, amorous newts.*

Good night, moon.

The soundtrack: I don't know about the times, but the colors they certainly are a-changing in the Quehanna Wild Area. The song is: Bob Dylan, with The Times They Are A-Changin'.

*P.S. Does anybody else think that Amorous Newts would make a great name for a rock band?