Outdoor Updates for Fall 2025

published 2025-09-04

By Christopher Howard

I didn't post anything in August about outdoor activities, whereas earlier in the summer I was sharing notes about flowers observed and such like. There were several reasons for this, but a big one is that I recently started jogging, and, as usual, the only convenient time I had available for that was during the lunch break. So, I was busying jogging during the time I might otherwise be looking at plants or taking notes. The weather is touch and go right now, with a lot of rainy days, so I'm trying to get out and do some jogging every time the conditions are half-way decent.

A few notes perhaps worth sharing:

Back in early August, I got to enjoy some good high-bush cranberry from the patch I know about out near the Tanana River. I just ate them straight off the bushes. I found some raspberry bushes out there as well, and the raspberries were tasty as always. I even got the family to come out and help me pick raspberries, though there were a lot less bushes than I had imagined, and we could barely fill up the bottom of one bucket.

Also, in the first week of August, there were a lot of dragonflies — on one walk, they were so thick that I could see hundreds of them down the trail. One landed on me, and several others flew close to my head. I like dragonflies because they are elegant, fascinating flying creatures, and also I know that they will not harm me like a bee or a mosquito might.

I've seen small flocks of geese flying here and there throughout August. Yesterday evening, two huge flocks flew overhead, flying rapidly due south. The first flock was a collection of smaller V and line formations, with maybe 200 birds altogether. The second flock came a few minutes later, in one huge V formation, with somewhere around 100 birds.

Yesterday morning, I saw my first stars again, since I stopped stargazing in Spring. It was 5:40am, in the front yard, just as I was heading to work. Actually, the two stars were Venus and Jupiter. The skies were cloudy, but I could see them both in some gaps in between the clouds.

I've learned now not to get too excited about stargazing this early in the last half of the year. In Fairbanks, the skies are usually overcast or mostly cloudy throughout the entire fall season. But I'll try to keep an eye on the weather forecast.

Copyright

CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed