Sam Cook

DULUTH, Minn. -- Walking in the dark woods the other night, I saw a splash of white light on the trunks of the Norway pines up ahead. I was walking the single-track trails at Hartley Park, and I had a hunch about the source of light. Night mountain bikers.

I was right. A couple of them had stopped to chat at an intersection of trails. Night biking is becoming more common as riders try to stretch their summer riding season as long as they can before the snow falls. They use powerful LED lights on their bikes and helmets to see the way.

I, too, was moving through a tunnel of artificial light -- my headlamp. It's getting harder, as the Northern Hemisphere leans away from the sun, to get in a long walk after work.

It's tough, for those of us who enjoyed light until 9:30 or 10 p.m. a couple of months back, to let go of long light. It's hard not to feel as if our world is closing in on us. This is the first stage of the oppressiveness of winter. We are hopelessly diurnal creatures, adapted to function in daylight hours.

I remind myself not to fight the darkness, and much of the time it works. The night doesn't have to be the bad guy, I tell myself.

DULUTH, Minn. -- One moment, Chris Hatfield of Two Harbors, Minn., was zipping along the North Shore State Trail on his snowmobile. The next, he was sprawled on the trail unconscious, the victim of a vicious collision.

With an owl.

Hatfield, 35, remembers the seconds leading up to the collision, which occurred about 8 p.m. on Jan. 8. He had just rounded a corner on the state trail in Duluth. He estimates he was traveling at 40 to 45 mph.

"Right in front of me, I saw something, and then it went black," Hatfield said. "It knocked me off the sled and knocked me out."

DULUTH, Minn. -- When Larry Kline shot the "ghost buck" near Gordon, Wis., in 2004, he told his wife, Amy, "This deer is going to change our life."

"And it has," he said.

Mike Hoops made his first trip to Montana to hunt elk in 1997 and began guiding for an outfitter in 2006. This will be his fifth season as a guide for Wilderness Connections in Gardiner, Mont.

STANLEY, N.D. -- The feeling is not so much one of hunting as being at sea in a rolling green prairie. On a September afternoon, three of us are following Labs and a pointer across nearly six square miles of native grassland on the Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern North Dakota.

Mike Hoops made his first trip to Montana to hunt elk in 1997 and began guiding for an outfitter in 2006. This will be his fifth season as a guide for Wilderness Connections in Gardiner, Mont.

GRAND MARAIS, Minn. -- You would think Brian Larsen is late for an appointment. He strides along a path in the forest at a clip just short of a run.