Surprise Trail

I know this guy, who, when I talk about my adventures in the wild (I have been enjoying hiking even before I came to the Yukon 18 years ago) But when I talk to him, he gets this sparkle in his eyes. Now I know why; He is the master of wilderness trails. Today I had the good fortune to come upon one of his trails. It took me two and a half hours to come to a certain spot, which without some kind of trail, would have taken me 3. I can't go into too much detail, because here in the Yukon (maybe everywhere) people are very secretive about 'their' certain spots. And rightfully so. But as I use this journal for future reference, I have to make some notes that make sense to me. I'll start in the middle, which is a certain hot spot. There I find an Artemisia (wild sage), it looks like the frigida, but has these distinct rosettes. Does anybody out there know what I mean? And! a grasshopper, don't know much about these either. It was about One inch long, black/yellow stripes and looked yellow in flight.
From there I take the trail and find blooming Northern Jasmine, tiny ones. This trail takes me into and old creek bed, which has now some water in it from the melted snow. Ah and then this new found trail going trough a beautiful pine forest. At some point I come to a fork, going right leads me to a wonderful high spot, I continue left and follow a drainage area, which brings me to the end of today's hike, A little lake, gorgeous! A pair of Green-winged Teals appear. They swim kind of in the middle and then hang around the opposite edge, the male in the grass. I hear a sound. One that I don't like, like a breaking branch. It could have been anything or nothing. But the ducks fly up and disappear into the trees. I don't know if they leave because of that sound, there was a delay, they might have just left to go to their nesting spot, because they forgot about me. Anyway, while singing and ode to the lake, time for me to leave too.