Nature’s capacity to mock the calendar is for me an eternally compelling stunt.

I relish the days — although sometimes the illusion lasts for just a few moments — when for instance the atmosphere conjures an autumn evening from an afternoon in high summer.

It happened to me a couple weeks ago, on Aug. 4.

The episode seems quite a lot more distant, though, what with the run of stifling days we have endured this past week, a stretch lacking the slightest suggestion of the season to come.

I was hiking near Trail Creek, through a section of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest scorched by the Cornet-Windy Ridge fire nearly eight years to the day, in August 2015.

Rain had fallen earlier in the day, the first meaningful storm since late June, and the showers had laid the dust.

It was cool for the first week of August, just 56 according to the car thermometer when I parked.

I hiked uphill to the east. My destination was a saddle between Trail and Beaver creeks, the border between public and private land.

The land has changed considerably since those terrible August days when the flames, propelled by hot, dry winds, rushed across these ridges.

The scars are visible, to be sure — a few snags that have shed most of their blackened bark, logs bleached silver, patches of the typically ashy soil of the Dooley Mountain country that have yet to be reclaimed by vegetation.

But the apocalyptic scene of 2015 has been softened.

Most of the dead trees have been cut and removed, their charred stumps among the tangible evidence of what happened here.

The grass has come back, along with a variety of other plants that thrive even after cataclysms — currants heavy with their glossy orange fruit, elderberries, the brilliant yellow blooms that decorate the otherwise dour rabbitbrush as summer fades.

Some mature trees survived, ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs, mainly, clumps and stringers of dark green that endured the inferno through the vagaries of topography and wind gusts and, perhaps, dumb luck.

A new forest is arising, too, although it will struggle to overcome the poor soil and the harsh climate on this divide between the cooler, wetter, conifer-friendly lands to the north and the high desert that stretches to the south, clear to the Great Basin and Nevada beyond.

I climbed to the saddle and looked across at the barren slopes of Beaver Mountain, scarified first by the 1989 Dooley Mountain fire, then by the much larger 2015 blaze.

I turned back, walking easy now with the consistent downgrade.

The first thing I noticed was the skim of clouds in the valley below, tufts of white like swirls of meringue atop a pie.

It feels peculiar to look down on clouds — at least when you’re on the ground and not in a jetliner.

But the experience is especially rare during summer and at the middling elevation where I was hiking, just 5,600 feet or so.

As I continued walking the air, which had been all but still, freshened into a breeze from the west, sweet with the scent of rain-moistened earth and foliage.

The sky was overcast but the clouds were of mottled texture and color rather than a flat, featureless expense of gray.

Although it was still only afternoon, sunset nearly four hours away, the sun was westering and the horizon in that direction, dominated by Black Mountain and the Elkhorns, with the defile carved by the Powder River between, had a hint of the peach tinge that distinguishes dusk.

I pulled the zipper of my fleece jacket — a garment that I all but forget about for much of summer — a few inches higher on my chest.

It was a strange sensation, right then.

The feeling is difficult to describe but the combination of the fading light and the low-lying clouds and the chill, damp gusts made a convincing case that it was not an afternoon in August but rather the cusp of night in October.

A night which would surely bring frost, and perhaps dust the peaks with early snow.

I thought in those queer moments not of barbecues and lawnmowers and the other symbols of summer.

I felt instead that I should have had a rifle on my shoulder and a deer tag in my pocket.

I fancied I could smell the rich smoke of a campfire of seasoned lodgepole, and detect the distant smudge of tamaracks shading to orange.

I imagined stepping into my house and hearing the soft hum not of the air-conditioner but of the furnace.

The interlude was as brief as it was piquant.

As I stepped into the rig and closed the door I recognized the illusion.

It was stuffy in there, and although I didn’t push the A/C button I did lower the driver’s side window a few inches to get a bracing draft.

Still and all, I enjoyed the respite from the season. I appreciate summer, to be sure. But most years by August I tire of the heat and the dust.

I’m not quite ready for snow.

But a glimpse of fall, that fine time between our climate’s harsh and often unpleasant extremes, is as refreshing as a swig of cold water on another stifling August day.

From Baker City, drive south on Highway 7, toward Sumpter, for about 8 miles to the junction with Highway 245. Turn left onto Highway 245 and drive 1 mile to Trail Creek Road, No. 1120. Turn left onto the gravel road. Follow Road 1120 for about 3 miles, crossing into the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, and park at the junction with the 850 road, which leads to the right. From here hike Road 1120 for about a mile to a junction. Road 1120 veers sharply to the right and uphill. Continue straight on Road 500. Follow it for about 1.5 mile to the saddle and locked gate.