We're getting ready to put together our 2025 Nature Up North calendar. Submit you're nature photos, like this photo from Azure, for a chance to earn a spot in the calendar! Winners receive a free calendar!

We're getting ready to put together our 2025 Nature Up North calendar, which means we need your photos! Submit your photos of nature, animals, landscapes, and people enjoying the outdoors to our encounters page, and your photos will automatically be included in our search for each month's calendar photo. Photos from October 2023 to present day will be considered.

If your photo is chosen, you'll get a free calendar as a thank you!

Munter Trail Fairy House Ask a Fairy

Thimble and Blossom are back on North Country Trails this fall! While they migrate south for warmer weather each winter, Thimble and Blossom stop over for a couple months on our trails to enjoy the fall foliage, tuck in the bears for hibernation, and to answer all of your nature questions! They stopped by Nature Up North to tell us how excited they are to see who can find their homes and to deliver their clues.

A fall canopy reflects a mirrored image in a glass-like river. Just Our Nature

When I was younger, an old-time arborist I knew used to say “The best time to prune trees is when the tools are sharp.” This guy was beset with shoulder injuries and knee problems because he also believed “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sadly, both of these old saws are dangerous lies.

A wasp sits on a white flower. Just Our Nature

I’m not one to shed a tear when authoritarian rulers die, but once they’re gone, outdoor dining becomes a lot more dangerous. As summer wanes, the original queen in every yellowjacket (or other social wasp species) colony dies. Turns out that having a few thousand babies in the course of one season is enough to tire any Queen Mum to death.

Fall trees along a lake's shoreline Just Our Nature

Recent studies show that trained dogs can sense Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, many forms of cancer, and other serious ailments long before symptoms show up. We may not be able to match such an impressive feat, but it turns out we’re not entirely inept when it comes to prescient diagnostics. There are two simple ways to detect grave illness in trees before they start looking overtly ill.

Goldenrod flowers in bloom Just Our Nature

Please don’t blame late-season allergies on goldenrod. Well, not unless you’ve discovered bees going up your nose lately. It turns out that pollen from goldenrod, which is in glorious bloom throughout the region right now, is too heavy to waft on the wind. These plants rely on bees and other pollinators to convey their sticky pollen grains from one flower to another, which is why goldenrods don’t cause hay fever, even if they wanted to.

Events Up North

October 19, 2024

Come hang out with Nature Up North by the fire on a Saturday evening! As the weather starts to cool and the bugs subside, a campfire is a perfect way to enjoy a North Country night.

October 27, 2024

Join Nature Up North and SLC Arts in Heritage Park for an afternoon of pumpkin carving, pumpkin painting, nature, and learning!