“The map of my heart looks a lot like yours from the one-way streets to the old detours to the dark dead ends with their missing signs” — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Whether using the stars to plot our course, a chart scrolled away in a fading memory, the wonder of the satellites, a good old compass, or a topo map worn and folded into a back pocket of our blue jeans, most of us enchanted by the natural world always seem to be headed somewhere.

Often, it’s with heart high and spirit soaring as we leave the blacktop and concrete of these small Upper Peninsula towns for the hemlock, the tamarack, the pine, birch and maple.

To the cool, tall grasses beside the rivers and creeks, where the wind and the birds and the swirling clouds in the black and blue skies write songs on our souls — an eternity of notes scattered between the raindrops and the constellations.

Sometimes we’re walking a lonely path, following the ghost of a good time long, long gone, but never forgotten. Listening to the nighthawks beep as they cut the sky with their sharp wings, twirling and diving in the orange, pink and blue light of another sunset, we hope for the seeming promise of another day.

Other times, we’re swimming, kicking and reaching for the bottom just out of touch in the cool waters of those quiet lakes, the ones loons have haunted for generation after generation. We stop to listen, no matter what we’re doing, to hear the ancient truths cast from their throats to the skies to our ears.

Or maybe it’s wading in the warm shallows where the beautiful green leopard frogs wait with their heads and eyes above the waterline, while dragonflies sputter over the reeds and rushes like old crop-dusting planes.

There are, of course, times we find ourselves sitting still on a rare and craggy ridge, high above the shining specularite along the old mine railroad beds and the gray, black and brown stitching of roadways woven into the patchwork of the countryside.

Here, up against the sky, we see the floating hawk and the majestic eagle turning slowly on the winds. We are nudged deep inside by a sensation whispering that though helplessly human, we will all fly one day, at least once.

However, the view at this height can also rob us of our breath, our hope and aspirations, looking at the slick, rain-soaked ledge and the sharp, jagged rocks threatening below. We know that hideous bareheaded vultures fly these same skies.

Meanwhile, the planets colored in red, sapphire and purple, spin in their mathematical orbits so far out of reach. Though we’re this high above the earth, we’re still too far away to reach the heavens. We are at once a long way down and a long way up.

Everything then seems so small and so big, simultaneously possible and impossible, lost and found, remembered and forgotten, broken and mended, alive and dead — we are gripped tightly with fear, a moment later, fearless and brave.

Even here, though we sit waiting, like time, we are still moving forward, going somewhere, some place — some faster than others.

We might be ambling toward the bench out at camp where the woods never felt warmer. The love and comfort of family and friends surrounds us, whether we are alone or not. The memories are as solid as iron and steel — the pull strong like the draw of a magnet.

Walking in twilight, under the dark towering trees, we are silent in the wilderness, but even when it’s cold and raining, we feel satisfied and free. From birth, our hearts have known the songs the seasons sing in the north country.

Trotting, we follow the tracks of animals hoping to learn their secret ways so that we might move ever closer to this land. We’re like a cracked coffee cup waiting to be filled up one more time, but our waitress is elusive and aloof.

We’re all the time moving, heading somewhere in these Great Outdoors.

But then, whether it’s a work day, a school night or a loved one their face pressed against the screen door at home, trying not to worry with the sun gone down, we are called back into the towns.

Again, we go, this time, though restored, we drag past the rusted railroad tracks and junked cars, buildings broken down and old main streets crumbled amid the Egyptian towers of past glories dead.

We drag ourselves back to the familiar streets of these towns.

Will we return to that door and our loved one’s smile, before already thinking about the next time we can again return to the muddy trails, the berry brambles and the apple trees, the song of the whip-poor-will, the power of a summer storm where we rest beneath the branches of a sentinel pine, where our tears are dried and our broken hearts comforted by Mother Nature herself?

Not likely. Not today. Not ever. As long as the world continues to turn, we’ll all keep moving, looking for another day to be in those magnificent woodlands, headed somewhere, some place — some of us faster than others.

Editor’s note: John Pepin is the deputy public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the DNR on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.