Headline        AUTUMN EXPLORATIONS FALL IS THE TIME FOR AMATEUR NATURALISTS TO GATHER A WINTER'S WORTH OF MEMORIES    
Run Date        9/9/1994       Day     Friday 
Page    C1     Section         Lifestyles     
Illustrator     PHOTO BY BOB HALLINEN  
Story Byline    By SANDI McDANIEL Daily News reporter  

      Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost wrote that in a poem in 1923. He meant youth or life or maybe innocence, but I think of that poem in autumn, when chill is the first small memory of winter. It seemed prudent to think of winter as I walked the moist banks of Goose Lake recently. Leaves from alder trees lay everywhere like spilled pocket coins, seasonal currency. Other denominations were spilled as well. Birch. Poplar. Cottonwood. Beyond the trees, the grind of traffic meant the city was at work. Yet here, minutes away, life was remarkably serene, still enough to hear my shoe bottoms scrape the footpath. TX: I was after true-bugs. Half wings, that is. Back swimmers, water striders, piercing, sucking mouth parts. "Found on plants, in debris or in water," said the field guide. "Simple metamorphosis." But why should I care about true-bugs? Or sticklebacks? Or hay mice, for all of that? What difference does it make to know a tundra vole from a bog lemming? A foxtail from a broomrape? A frigid arnica from a meadow arnica? In short, knowing is less important than wondering. The first rule of the amateur naturalist is that you needn't memorize the encyclopedia; the value is chiefly in being there. I never understood this better than last spring when I flew home while Alaska was still in deep freeze. In Tennessee, the hills were chartreuse. Fruit trees bloomed. I craved the exposed ground and split my fingernails digging into it. I wanted to feel garden soil and grass blades and the slimy undersides of creek rocks. I learned that to be indifferent to Alaska's nonwhite seasons is to feel regret when snow is still falling in May. Beyond food and shelter, human survival in winter requires a healthy psyche. Is it accidental that nature detonates with color in fall, giving us a paintbox of memories to live on through winter? Aspen leaves dangle like gold jewelry in a Moroccan bazaar. Rosehip berries burn on the bush, smooth and round as a Botticelli bottom. "All through autumn, we hear a double voice," essayist Gretel Ehrlich once wrote. "One says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite." To some of us, the transformation is exhilarating. To others, autumn seems the end of everything. So, I was searching for true-bugs. Like red squirrels hoarding up spruce cones in fall, I wanted to lay in a store of sensations. There's still time. But you must be an optimist, for fall is the season of pessimists. Every living creature is preparing for the worst. There are cocoons to spin, nests to line. On the slopes, male sheep choose their harems. Lambs will come from this, wobbly legged and wet-faced in spring. Always, for each species, there is the concern of survival and procreation. Trees survive by discarding their leaves. Newcomers may have noticed that in Alaska, our alpine forest is rich in gold, but few reds and oranges. Why? The reason is that prevalent deciduous trees here, such as birch, aspen, cottonwood and 33 species of willow, contain mostly carotenoids, a chemical that conveys pigments of gold. Anthocyanin produce vivid reds. But leaves don't really change colors. The fall hues are actually present all summer, masked by the green of chlorophyll. In abscission the annual shedding of leaves trees don't lose their color because of the cold. Rather, it's because they don't get as much water in fall when the ground cools. They're conserving moisture right now, cued by shorter days, and will sacrifice their water guzzling leaves to make it through winter. Conifer needles are better water preservers and thus hold their green. Reds and oranges may be missing from the forest canopy, but they're spreading through the understory that layer of brush along the forest floor. Highbush cranberry turns a murderous red in September. If cottonwood leaves wave at us, quaking aspens dance. They revel in their golden good looks and on sunny days, shimmer in dense stands like showgirls. These trees adapt to rocky alpine slopes by growing their roots sideways, actually genetically cloning themselves. Evergreens in the "drunken forest" are shallow growers, too. They can't tap down below the permafrost, so, like many Alaskans, their roots never grow too deep here. Bohemian waxwings are Alaska's wood fairies, sensed more than seen by a flash of wing, a rustle of leaves. They're patrolling the bushes for juicy berries now. Mountain ash will hold its berries all winter, but baneberries are falling, drops of lip-red venom in the moss. Birds are indiscriminate, dining greedily. They and small mammals spread berry seeds through the forest by passing them in their scat. Along the trails, you may still find alpine wildflowers, dainty, yet valiant creations. With such short growing seasons, years may pass before they can store up enough energy to bloom, so when they do, their colors are memorable. In the Chugach a few tiny flowers are left, summer's afterthoughts. Violet monk's hoods are known to hold their vanity late in the season, and blossoms of fireweed linger, strumpets caught in a web of their own making the long, narrow pods on fireweed dry and burst in fall, releasing clouds of cottony seeds that settle over the plants like a cloak. Even more intent on proliferation are wild geraniums. Their drying pods trigger a coiled spring inside that spews forth seeds when tripped. Look in the underbrush for a small, dried plant with round seed pods. This is called rattlebox, nature's own toddler toy. By moist pathways and meadows, the deep, dank smell of cow parsnip is prevalent. It's known for its pungent, stale undertone. The stalks, as high as 8 feet, are brown now with wide, lacy tops. Pull one and try to bend it. They're hollow but strong and will stand like spears through the snow. On September mornings, bull moose battle each other like Argonauts across meadows and valleys, their antlers clacking and hooking. The rutting play not only determines mating order, it helps the moose scrape away the velvet skin from the hard underbody of their antlers. Sometimes strips of the soft stuff hang like party streamers in tree branches. You might find some in the Krummholz, a German word meaning "elfin timber." These are the trees on high slopes whipped so severely by wind they grow like gnarled fingers. Beavers are busy as, well . . . beavers in fall, especially on a full moon. They gather fresh cottonwood branches and pile them underwater so that when the pond ices over, they'll have a good supply of food stored in a watery refrigerator. Their lips close behind their incisors to allow them to chew underwater. Nestled in paper birch bark, mud puddles and leaf casings, Alaska's insects survive the winter largely unnoticed. Stink bugs huddle beneath birch paper in communes of 20 or so. Ladybugs, favorites of gardeners, are not indigenous to Alaska and die upon the first freeze. So do darner dragonflies, but they leave a strong legacy, laying hundreds of eggs along the shorelines. Few creatures overwinter more cleverly than leafrollers, who cocoon by wrapping the edges of a leaf around themselves like a thick, green quilt. Several moths and butterflies adopt this strategy suspending themselves inside a ghostly web of white until spring. Incredibly, three species of Alaska butterflies still their wings and hibernate in the crevices of trees. Woodwasps are curious. They're like bees someone has gently stretched. They have the wingspan of a C-130 and about as much grace. They can't sting you, only zing you with the force of their bodies when they crash into you. In fall, the females bore their overpositors into tree trunks and discharge eggs. Sawdust caves in over the eggs, but the offspring will eat their way out in spring. What could possibly live in a mud puddle? The predaceous diving beetle, for one. Their back legs are actually fins, and they're busy gorging themselves with anything that moves before retreating beneath the ice in winter. They're tenacious, attacking and devouring prey much larger than they. Not one of God's most attractive creatures, they're worthy of our love they eat mosquitoes. Birds migrate for food, not warmth, and some have already left us. Long V- lines in the sky are Canada geese, heading off to winter in Washington and Oregon. Little brown bats, which are mammals, haven't adapted to winter here, so they leave and return in spring. Thrushes and robins are moving south. Young birds making their first trip may be confused by the concept of glass. Placing falcon and owl silhouettes in your windows will keep them from crashing. Some songbirds, like the dark-eyed junco, the pine grosbeak and the white- winged crossbill will brave the Alaska cold, finding shelter in the hollows of trees or in the deadfall. They move down from the Chugach into the Anchorage Bowl in winter. You can leave sunflower and thistle seeds for them in a feeder, but don't feed migrating ducks and geese. They get used to it and tarry too long, getting caught in a winter they can't survive. Biologists believe black-capped chickadees set up winter dorms inside fallen trees, nesting together for warmth. After arriving in Alaska two winters ago, I wondered if any songbirds lived here all I saw were ravens. That's partially because songbirds are homebodies and churchgoers while ravens are grifters, crowing over the stolen meals and shiny curiosities they find in the city. If ravens could get away with it, they'd affect disguises, like ptarmigans and short-tailed weasels, who will molt to white with the first snow. The first snow. How many more autumns will each of us have to search for true-bugs and pine nuts and the purple fruit of serviceberries? How many more chances? Novelist Paul Bowles explored this idea in "The Sheltering Sky." We think in terms of infinity, he wrote, "Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really . . . How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless." Better have another look while woolly aphids cling to tall reeds like sea foam. While red squirrels bomb the trails with spruce cones to harvest later. And smoldering puffballs explode like powder shots beneath a single raindrop.

Sources: Julie Riley and Charles Kirby, Alaska Cooperative Extension; John Schoel, Nancy Tankersly and Rick Sinnott, Alaska Department of Fish and Game; Carole Lloyd, Eagle River Visitors Center; Garry Davies, University of Alaska Anchorage department of biology; "Why is the Sky Blue & Other Wonders of the Earth," by William Clevenger (Mallard Press, 1992); "The Natural World," Malcolm Coe, ed., (Oxford University Press, 1985); "A Naturalist's Guide to Chugach State Park," by Jenny Zimmerman, (A.T. Publishing and Printing, 1993); "A Practical Guide for the Amateur Naturalist," by Gerald Durrell, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).