“It will fill you with emotion, if you let it be your guide so turn around; turn around, it’s on the other side.” — Kerry Livgren

In the uncomfortable heat and humidity of a late south-central Indiana afternoon, like a character in a Lewis Carroll novel, I ventured through the mirror into a fantastical world I had trouble grasping.

Only a moment earlier, I had been sitting with a friend at a picnic table eating peanut butter crackers, drinking a cool juice and listening to chimney swifts twitter as they circled in the sky above us.

The cool green grass around the picnic table had been freshly mowed and the parking lot blacktopped. Around us, people were set on grabbing ahold of some summertime fun, tossing bean bags, laughing and talking, enjoying a picnic.

But once we dipped inside the tree line, a gravel and leaf-covered trail dropped us precipitously into a rugged ravine. Along the edges of the trail grew incredibly tall plants and vines, many I had never seen before, some bearing odd green fruits the size of a Kennedy half dollar.

The buzzing and whistling sounds of insects, birds and frogs filled the air.

My initial impression that being here was like emerging a survivor from a plane crashed in a rainforest grew stronger as we snaked farther down the trail to the bottom of the lush ravine.

A small creek ran slow over the foot of the trail and cold across my feet.

It was then that I slowly looked up.

There was hardly any part of the sky that wasn’t covered by the tree canopy, which towered more than 100 feet above our heads. The trees were massive and grew close together forming a fortress for all the wild things living here inside.

Even the trees I knew from home, like beeches and oaks, grew so tall and were so big around I barely recognized them. Some of these amazing giants had been felled by powerful winds that gripped this place on stormy days.

The magnificence of this place left me forgetting why I was even there. Like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, your breath leaves you. I just wanted to lie on my back and look at the trees.

This was a definitively special place.

Rare yellowwood trees were there, named for the color of their heartwood. There were also sycamores and walnut, hickory, sassafras, birches and black, red, silver and sugar maples.

Timber rattlesnakes slink among the rocks and crevices, southern flying squirrels and bats, like eastern pipistrelle, were there too. In the surrounding woods and lakes, more wildlife strange to a visitor from the Upper Peninsula.

Which I recalled is why we were here — to try to locate a few birds we couldn’t find at home, most notably, the caterpillar-munching, ground-nesting, worm-eating warbler.

We had done well the past couple of days, double-teaming to find a Kentucky warbler along the shoreline of a reservoir lake. I found Carolina wrens singing from the low brush and nesting in the porch eave of my cabin.

This part of Indiana is known for worm-eating warblers, with visitors coming to this place specifically to find them. These small birds come to the U.S. in spring and summer from central America and Mexico to breed.

A tip from a stranger familiar with Ogle Hollow suggested we might try our luck here, with the bird favoring steep slopes with dense growth underneath the tree canopy.

The trail had been back and forth across the creek, but now, it seemed to be turning away from the stream back up to the hillside. We decided to follow the creek instead, off the trail, upstream through tangles of thick brush, fallen trees and stinging nettles.

Not far up the creek, we heard a chipping noise in the bushes. My buddy played a recording of the dry trill of the warbler on his cellphone. “This could be it,” he said.

We both felt the anticipation. A lot of warblers make chipping sounds.

Then, all at once, it appeared in the low branches of a tree — non-descript for the most part, minus the stripes on its head and through the eye. The rest of the bird was more yellow than we had expected.

As it sang back to us, it was no doubt the little gold treasure we had come to find. Moments later, with the help of a recording, we heard the faint whinny of an eastern screech owl coming from the trees at the top of the tremendous gorge.

With the sun going down, we climbed up the trail stopping to catch numerous last looks and listens at this amazing place. Seconds later, we had broken through the line of trees and stood once again only a short distance from the parking lot.

Back at my cabin, where the wood thrushes sang continuously in the moist evening air, I glanced at the cover of a travel brochure for Brown County.

Inside, the text told me Brown County was the “perfect place to unplug and rediscover quality time with your family.” That would be the grassy, picnic table side of the mirror.

“It’s the perfect place to explore — on foot or on horseback — one of the many scenic trails that crisscross their way through beautiful Brown County State Park and the spectacular Hoosier National Forest.” That would be the rainforest jungle we found.

With this excursion having been a respite from a national conference of folks like us, who do what we do at the Michigan DNR, we could appreciate the sentiments expressed by the Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The tourist guide continued, “Whether you’re an avid outdoors person or an unabashed city slicker, a getaway to remember is waiting for you in Brown County.”

I guess they were right.

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 Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.