Whew! What a whirlwind week. I feel like a dark funnel cloud has swept me away. Maybe I’d best just go limp and let it drop me where it pleases, totally at its mercy, hopefully depositing me in a freshly harrowed field. But first, as I brace for the landing from this dizzying spin, a few harmless observations from a meandering mind.

I was hoping to have something on the preliminary September bear harvest and queried the proper person but have heard not a word, about what I’ve grown to expect. That’s just the way it goes nowadays, ever since Gov. Mitt Romney made it impossible to get quick, candid answers from state employees, who by law cannot speak to the press without approval from an inside screening agency. Of course, part of me feels like that rule gives employees every opportunity to drag their feet and work at their own snail’s pace, but what to do? I’ll be curious to find out what, if any, impact the EEE scare had on the hunter participation. I myself knew a hunter who took a town robo-call warning about EEE and would not sit in his stand for fear of being bitten by an infected mosquito, not an unwise decision, I guess. Anyway, it’s no secret that the Bay State bear population continues to grow at a burgeoning rate, one that it’s clear cannot and never will be effectively managed under current hunting regulations that forbid hounds or bait or both while officials refuse to address other potential measures, such as opening the shotgun and primitive-firearm deer seasons to random bear kills when opportunity presents itself. I’m not saying I’m for bear hunting during deer season, only listing it as a potential solution from a limited pool of options. The choices are few if the state wants to rely on hunting as its bear-management tool. Bait and hounds are legal in surrounding states, where the annual bear harvests dwarf ours.

Something else worth mentioning is that the Western and Valley District fall trout-stocking have been out for a week, with, as always, some local waters on the list, including the upper and lower Deerfield River, Millers River, Ashfield Lake, Upper Highland Lake in Goshen, Lake Mattawa in Orange, Lake Wyola in Shutesbury, Laurel Lake in Erving, and Sheomet Pond in Warwick. Although I have not seen the Millers orDeerfield rivers this week, I do observe the Green River daily and it looks prime for angling, flowing at near perfect depth and current. No, the Green won’t receive a fall allotment. Still, there must be many plump spring holdovers that are by now fully acclimated to their new home. The same can be said for most river systems that were generously stocked in April and May.

Meanwhile, woodcock season opened Wednesday, and you should soon start noticing pheasant-stocking trucks on the highways and byways for that season, which opens on Oct. 13, along with the partridge and rabbit seasons. Squirrel season has been open for a couple of weeks. What about waterfowlers, you ask? Well, the Berkshire and Central Zones will open for ducks and geese on Wednesday and the Coastal Zone opens three days later, on Oct. 13. Two days later (Oct. 15) the archery deer season will commence, with the fall turkey (Oct. 29) and second segment of the bear season (Nov. 5-24) on the near horizon.

It’s difficult to assess our wild mast crops because I have not traveled widely but do hope to be out and about soon. Judging from what I have seen in my daily rambles and heard from reliable sources, wild apples can be hard to find. The apple tree in my yard produced not a one that I could find, and I mow. Plus, only one of three wild trees I pass on my daily walks with the dogs produced any fruit, and even that tree dropped less than 10, which my dogs had cleaned up before September. A quick look at that stately riverside tree on Wednesday produced no lonely apple sightings. Acorns and beechnuts are spotty but can be plentiful in some places. There are acorns on the ground where I walk daily, also hickory nuts, but I have not seen a butternut or beechnut on the ground where they were plentiful last year.

On a long, relaxing hike through the woods of South Amherst and northern Granby with a dignified lady last week — following a network of paths connected to the Matacomet/Monadnock Trail behind her home off the old Bay Path — we found many acorns and beechnuts in gorgeous hardwoods marked by distinctive outcroppings of ledge, remarkably similar to Whately/Conway woods I patrol and worship. Among our samples on the ground were what I believed to be white-oak acorns that looked like those oblong commercial green grapes you’d buy at Big Y. The ones that caught my attention were shiny and out of their caps, which for some reason were scarce on the ground next to the nuts. My friend speculated that a windstorm may have been responsible. Although I hadn’t packed my Sibley’s tree-identification guidebook, my thinking was that we were dealing with white-oak acorns that, unlike those from red oaks, germinate in the fall. Upon closer inspection of random oaks here and there for rest of our two-plus-hour hike, we found many white oaks, some of them chestnut oaks, identifiable by their leaves and deep-furrowed bark, similar from afar to black locust. My friend said she often bumps into hunters on her daily fall walks, and I can see why. The woods behind her home are an example of classic Pioneer Valley hardwood forest, the terrain open and manageable afoot, with many ravines and rocky knobs to use as observation decks.

That noontime walk inspired me to find a partner for a trip to a certain balanced rock I know sitting on a high, secludedWilliamsburgridge. A photographer has already approached me about accompanying me there and elsewhere in the same quadrangle. Great news! I want some photos of the large sacred stone that oozes Manitou, which wafts through the dense mountain-top laurel on the east rim. That journey is on my short list, a good excuse to assess the deer sign through familiar but long-neglected woods. First I must escape this disorienting manmade cyclone, definitely not the worst I’ve encountered; in fact, not even close.

I suppose that’s why I’m confident I’ll get through it. Who knows? I may even land in a better place.