Suppilovahvero

Everyone's hungry this morning.

I'm out early looking for late chanterelles - the tubiform kind with black tops and yellow stems. They have no English common name; I call them yellow-legs, the Finns call them suppilovahvero. Cantharellus tubaeformis. It's been wet lately and not too cold - good conditions and the right time and place: the woods.

Overnight, though, everything has turned to silver. Frost reaches right up into the trees. Frosted spider webs cross the paths. There are frozen deer slots at the wood edge, hard set and clear.

A red squirrel, actually a ruddy brown, stirs herself from a reverie of cold as I walk by; acorns are frozen to the ground where they fell. We regard each other solemnly, as folk who realise that autumn is over. The last aspen leaves are tumbling too, early sun touching the tops of the trees and releasing the stems from the grip of frost.

My old friend, the fox, kettu, hears me coming crackling leaves underfoot and makes his near invisible, silent russet way off along the path through falling buttery aspen leaves and frosted brown oak leaves.

Jays are beginning to flash about, pinkish and part blue-winged, singing a little. They sound like squirrels should sound like. But more are noticing me and scolding from one side, then echoed on the other.

The cold makes us all cranky. I've little hope of finding yellow-legs among all these falling yellow leaves, so being pragmatic will head back and have a breakfast egg without mushrooms. I have the choice; fox, jay and the others must forage all the harder.

And it'll get harder too. As I get back to Saari, Simo is using an old drill to make holes for snow poles in the frozen ground next the driveways . They look a little gay, a little odd - they are made from the tops of spruce trees with topmost branches still intact, needled thickly. Snow is on its way.