The other day my son John and I went exploring the woods, visiting Beck Lake just off Central and Milwaukee. We found an empty snail shell that he proceeded to carry around for about a week. This shot, taken by my wife in Emily Oaks Woods in Skokie, reminds me of Conrad Richter's excellent novel The Trees:

Traipsing around the pond in Emily Oaks, Skokie Park District, near our home.

"The gums along the river flew and the dogwoods flushed up like the wattles of wild turkey gobblers. Of a morning the pinch of frost nipped your legs, and the acorns in the deer paths were mighty hard on bare feet. The woods air smelled fermented as cider. And the hill hooters of a night tried to raise the dead.
Not that the young ones minded it. They were drunk on fall. It was hardly daylight till they piled out of the leanto to hunt chestnuts and drag in shellbarks and look first at their snares for small game. Piles of walnut hulls rose by the big rock and their hands were stained darker than Shawanees. They hung to scarlet creepers and swung back and forward over logs that would have broken their backs had they ever let go. At deep dusk when they came in, they ate, yawned and lay down together in the shelter like a pile of wolf puppies for warmth till it was time to be up and rip and tear again. ...
It meant small shakes to them that the cabin wasn't done. They were tickled the leaves were coming down. They ran through them like it was the first snowfall, kicking them with their bare feet to stir up that tanyard smell. The birch and gum leaves were about the first to drop. The maples, ash and poplars shed not long after. You couldn't open your eyes without seeing the air full of leaves. They had no mind where they wanted to land. Some turned head over tincup till it made a body dizzy to watch. All night long you could hear them whisper when they lit. By morning the sleepers in the shelter were stitched with a hap of red, brown and gold."