We’re halfway to winter! Yikes! Check out the weather page today and you’ll see we’ve lost more than three hours of daylight since mid-June. Note that Friday marked the autumnal equinox (day and night each have 12 hours), when the sun crossed the equator heading south for the year, marking the start of fall for those of us up here in the Northern Hemisphere.

What that really means for those of us who live for the daylight hours is that there’ll be about six more months before daylight hours outnumber nighttime hours. For those who thrive on darkness, your time has come.

For me it means paddles in the dark of evenings until the ice skims over my usual haunts.

If you haven’t had a chance to get out and view the foliage, you best plan on it soon. As a matter of fact, north of Bangor the colors are out in force, and I’m told may be peak or past north of Presque Isle.

I was in Presque Isle Wednesday and Thursday visiting with this paper’s Aroostook County reporters, Jen Lynds, Beurmond Banville, and Rachel Rice. The trip up Wednesday was through intermittent rain, so the view of hillsides was somewhat limited. But you can see as you get farther north that the colors are more and more brilliant.

After finishing our visit Thursday I decided that the boring trip back down I-95 was out of the question. It would be Route 1 or 2. The friendly lady at the Houlton information center helped me make up my mind when she told me she had a camp on Grand Lake and that Route 1 would be a good choice. And don’t miss the Million Dollar View at Weston, she reminded me.

Any route with a Million Dollar View is OK in my book. Route 1 was a good choice, I thought, as I headed south from town on fresh, smooth pavement. But the Million Dollar View was the icing on the cake. There’s a scenic turnout with free binoculars that provides a view of Longfellow, Brackett, and Grand lakes and on into Canada. The helpful sign below the binoculars tells you where to point the lenses to see private homes on Green Mountain on the Forest City to Fosterville, New Brunswick, road some 7 miles distant. There’s The Tongue Point in Forest City 8 miles away, Greenland Island in Danforth Township, Five Islands, and the list goes on.

In the 10 minutes or so that I stopped to take in the views, a motor home and another car pulled in. It’s one place you can’t skip on this sparsely traveled road.

At Danforth I hooked up with Route 169 that joins Route 6 in Springfield and from there I headed to Lincoln and to I-95, but not before thinking for a few minutes of taking Route 2 south to Old Town. Thursday was one of those cool, windy, and clear days that begged for further exploration.

But shadows were getting longer and I had some unfinished business at work.

I’m having a difficult time adjusting to these shorter days. And why is it always shorter on the end of the day?

Last weekend, I headed out to Pushaw Lake on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings for some shorter paddling outings, arriving each day around 6 p.m. and had to strap my boat on the roof afterward in the dark.

We had some bonus warm days, though, didn’t we? Salmon in the Penobscot River may have had reason to stress over it, but I welcomed the extra BTUs. I dread the first drone of the furnace.

It’s a great time of year to be paddling. The air temperature is still pleasant and water temperatures haven’t started dropping yet. Lake levels may be lower, so if you are paddling at dusk or dark, keep that in mind. You may find a new rock or two or one of those big ol’ stumps that have been hidden below the surface all summer. If you paddle a well-used body of water like Pushaw Lake, others boaters likely will have marked those rocks with bleach or detergent bottles.

Camp owners have begun taking in their floats and docks, and boats that have dotted the water near many of the camps have been pulled to shore. Even the animals have begun to take on a winter preparation mode.

Sunday evening I surprised two beavers at different locations on Pushaw. They were busy on their homeward commute, I guess, and didn’t see me until I was within 30 or so feet. Each one gave me the flat-tail salute and splashed noisily beneath the surface. I also surprised a little mink near Moose Island. And two loons on the eastern side of the island got vocal when they realized that the drifting white log was me. One closest to me winked its red eye and told me in no uncertain terms that I had violated his privacy. Sorry, I said, as I slowly and silently paddled off.

I was looking over my shoulder at the two when my friend “Eddy the Eagle” sprang off a dead branch to my left and flew up the island. There’s hardly an outing at the lake I don’t see him or his younger cousin. As I made my way counterclockwise around the island in the dusk, “Eddy” flew twice more from perches above my head and around the next corner.

I stopped just off the beach on Moose to take a sip of water. Out of sight, a gaggle of geese squawked and talked. Earlier I saw a couple of smaller groups of ducks heading home for the evening. As usual, the resident gull population was present and accounted for.

Mosquito foiler

Aside from the scourge of spiders and their sticky webs that have infested us, the warmth has brought out another hatch of mosquitoes. I thought we’d be rid of the pesky little dears, but no, they were out in numbers. It was good news in a way, for me, because I recently received a press kit from ThermaCELL, the folks who make those personal mosquito repellant units.

They sent me a hand-held unit and a little lantern to try. Both units burn butane and heat a small pad containing allethrin, which is described as a copy of a naturally occurring insecticide. The company claims it is 98 percent effective in repelling mosquitoes within a 15- by 15-foot area of the unit (provided there’s no breeze blowing). The company claims the repellant is a nontoxic, synthetic analog of a natural insecticide, pyrethrin found in the pyrethum flower, a member of the chrysanthemum family.

I wasn’t in a rush to get home Saturday night because my wife was working late, so the first thing I did when I hit shore was to start up the hand-held unit (it’s simple, just switch to on and snap an igniter button and look for the dull orange glow through a small “window”). I placed it on the back bumper of my Explorer as I cleaned out my boat. The unit is about the size of a hand-held radio. A small repellant pad slips into a grill on the face of the unit and the butane-fueled heater warms the pad to release the ingredients that keep the bugs at bay. And from what I found Saturday evening, the little thing works.

Rather than head home, I dallied around, taking my time putting the boat on my car and stowing paddles and gear. Then I rolled down the window, turned on the radio and pulled up to a nearby boulder for a chair and sat in the dark to test ThermaCELL’s claims. The rock got hard on my backside and I got bored after about 20 minutes, but I didn’t get bit.

I’m sure I could not find a place on my already-stuffed lifejacket to carry this rig, but I’m going to find space in my kayak to have it to use when I go ashore. The little lantern is cute, but don’t plan on reading anything by its light. It’s decorative yet utilitarian as it works silently to ward off pesky mosquitoes, sand flies, and no-see-ums. And should you accidentally tip it over, it goes out.

Don’t forget the bog walk

Even though summer’s a memory there is still plenty of time to get in an easy hike or two. For those of us who live in the Queen City confines, don’t forget about the Bangor City Forest and the Orono Bog. My wife, Kathy, and I took a jaunt around the boardwalk last weekend and bumped into dozens of others who had the same idea. The parking lot at the City Forest was full.

The bog is changing its summer face into fall and the smell of mustiness is in the air. Pitcher plants were full of water while the skunk cabbage had turned into dark green/black lumps that looked like small pineapples on the ground. The cotton grass was just about puffed into its fall finery sitting atop tall stalks and waving in the breeze.

From the Orono Bog Walk Web site here’s what’s changing during October: Larch or tamarack needles are smoky gold and starting to fall; red maple leaves are bright red, winterberry fruit are bright red (they are now). In the first half of November the tamarack and red maple leaves fall. In the second half of November the boardwalk closes – the exact date depends on weather and surface conditions.

If you check out the bog’s Web site, www.oronobogwalk.org, you’ll find there’s one more guided tour for the year scheduled for 8:30-11p.m., Oct. 21. The program, Night Skies Over The Bog, featuring the Orionid meteor show, will be led by Professor David Batuski of University of Maine Department of Physics and Astronomy. Meet at the parking lot at the Tripp Drive entrance to the Bangor City Forest. In case of rain or cloud cover late Saturday afternoon, contact Professor Batuski at 866-5548 between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. to confirm that walk has been postponed to Oct. 22 and to indicate whether you plan to participate.

If you’re looking to do some walking in the woods close to home, check out the city forest. It’s off Stillwater Avenue north of the Bangor Mall. Head north on Stillwater Avenue, and turn left at Tripp Drive.

Bangor City Forest is approximately 650 acres with 4.6 miles of access roads and 9.2 miles of walking and cross-country skiing trails. Dogs on a leash are permitted on most of the trails. Dogs are not permitted on the boardwalk, however.

Audubon auction

The fifth annual Fields Pond Audubon Center Auction is set for Friday. Preview time is 6 p.m. and the fun begins at 6:30 p.m. Bob Duchesne is the auctioneer and proceeds benefit local environmental education programs. For more detail, check out their Web site at www.pvcaudubon.org or call 989-2591.

Jeff Strout’s column on outdoor recreation is published each Saturday. He can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangordailynews.net.