A path that yesterday was almost swept clean, today is covered in leaves ankle deep, and if around the next corner I ran into tigger, Winnie-the-pooh, or piglet, I wouldn't be too surprised. Some places I walk have a magic all their own and this is certainly one of them. Little skiff's of a breeze find the forest floor and kick a leaf or two to catch my eye. They make the thought of leaving this stump real difficult. I feel better in spots like this. In the last week I shot five grouse off this trail. Found a lasts years four point buck antler and had the direct pleasure of watching a porcupine shuffle across the forest floor. With all the dried leaves he sounded like a crunchy scrub brush as he plodded along. I watched that whistle pig scuff about until he loafed up under a fallen tree. I knew he was there, but once he stopped moving his woodland camouflage took over and he just disappeared from view. While I ate my lunch of hard boiled eggs and apples today, a chickadee landed on my arm, I was so startled I dropped one of the egg yolk remains and I can only hope some hard working field mouse finds it. This week by the way, I've been very sick, so sick I couldn't go to work because I might have missed the end of the best late duck hunting and some woodcock flights which since nobody can predict those, or the weather, or when that final fall salmon run, will run, I always try to be prepared with a handful of, get well, and get as much of it as you can days, days. And if I was a predictor of anything more than when I was gonna be sick, or If I was the weatherman I'd tell people things they could use, like take today for instance. The local prognosticator said it was gonna be sunny, with winds up to six miles per hour out of the north, with very little chance of rain. That was it, that's all he had. When to me it's a mild breeze out of the northwest, which is refreshing about eleven in the morning for a nice late breakfast or early lunch to sit just south of this balsam stand and soak up all that late fall sunshine after chasing timber doodles and grouse, it was too nice a day to hunt ducks, no rain, meant no salmon run, so I walked. He didn't even mention the nights and with the cold hard frosts it's about the perfect time to go pick as many rose hips and high bush cranberries laced with vitamins as I can get my hands on. So after I tuck this apple core in branch crook and since I still don't feel too good, that's how I'm going to spend the afternoon, because I know those free forested fruits will heal me in about three or four more days. The trout whisperer