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Outdoors North

Forestlands are refuge for writer

John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Journal columnist

“The summer days, summer nights are gone.” — Bob Dylan

In the high time of summer, in those beach ball, sun-tanned, sandy beaches and soothing, cool-water swimming days, I’m sitting here thinking about disconnection.

Seems a little odd.

But there’s a sense, all around, of the fading and the falling. It’s a song nature is playing on a long-play record, as clear and warm as vinyl.

It feels like maybe one more occasion during the year that I’m not clicking fully in sync with the seasons. I can’t clearly make out exactly where things are, but they are trending assuredly along a faint and rumbling crescendo that will climax with a cymbal smash announcing autumn’s grand entry.

Even after some crashing thunderstorms, which either dropped rain in a tremendous downpour or softer, steadier, all night showers, the creeks and streams are in dire need of water.

A few I’ve seen have been choked almost dry. Within others, foot-tall growths of stiff, green grass are sticking up out of them. Or the thick growth of grass flows downstream, like a long mane of hair.

In some places where the heavy storms passed overhead, the resulting deluge washed loads of sand from the riverbanks into the water. Deep holes have been filled in, leaving only an inch or two of water running over the top.

Like in springtime, the river also gouged deeper into the stream bottom, making those now the deeper, colder places where the trout would congregate on these hot, summer days.

Maybe it’s the calendar that’s left me stunned, asking where seven full months of the year have gone already. Perhaps it’s the fact that a lot of my summer’s big things have already passed by, and I can sense Labor Day looming just over the horizon.

Whatever the case, there seems to be a hollowness pervading everything. Out here in the woods, the growth of plants, shrubs and the tall, green and yellow grasses has hit its peak. Let the wilting begin!

I often wonder, when I’m out here walking these dirt roads why there aren’t other people doing the same thing. I will see people driving all kinds of machinery — from dirt bikes and side-by-sides to cars and trucks — but I can’t recall any other walkers.

I guess all the hikers are on the trails. Once in a great while, I might see a fisherman or two walking along a road to take a short cut from one hole to the next. I guess I have seen a hunter or two walking a road for partridge or deer in the fall.

But just somebody walking down the dirt road to see what’s out there going on, I can’t recall that happening. I keep wondering why.

This is a beautiful time to be outdoors. Some of the blueberries and all the raspberries are ripe, while the blackberries and thimbleberries I’ve seen are still either green-berried or their branches are laced in white, pre-berry blossoms.

On a recent evening, I was driving along one of these out of the way back roads when I saw something I don’t often see. It was an American bittern standing alongside the wetland plants, just off the gravel shoulder.

It was right out in the open. These birds are usually heard making their water-pump sounds from a good distance out in a marsh. Mostly brown colored, they have a habit of standing still and extending their necks to make themselves blend in with the surrounding vegetation.

One of my sons, visiting from the Land of Enchantment, was with me that night. We were heading out for some after supper fishing. On the way home, as night began to fall, we saw a couple of dusky-orange reflections shining back toward us in our headlight beam, from the edge of the sandy roadbed.

Recognizing we were seeing the eyes of a nighthawk of some kind I stopped the vehicle and we slowly moved closer. The bird flapped upward from the road and flew away.

Another couple hundred feet farther down the road, the same scene repeated itself. I said these would either be nighthawks or whip-poor-wills. I explained that whip-poor-wills are one of the birds that says its own name when it sings.

He said he had never heard one, that he could recall.

On cue, I rolled down the window and stopped the vehicle abruptly when I heard a whip-poor-will singing off in the cutover countryside.

We had no fish that night, but a great experience for the memory file made even greater having been able to share it with my son.

On this summery day today in the woods, there is a strange silence. I not only would not see another person out here all afternoon, the woods are almost still with quiet as most of the birds have stopped singing, now long-since mated and tending to their young.

I did see a fawn lope across the road in front of me and, miles farther away, a beautiful doe. There was a young eagle that lifted off a tree branch not far off the road.

But otherwise, very quiet. With the exception, of course, of the late-summer mosquitoes that were buzzing around my head, trying to get into my ears and face. There were a few biting flies out here too.

This was one of those times when I felt nature itself might have been on summer vacation. The intricate interconnections of sights and sounds, smells and touches seemed to be out of reach or muted somehow.

These seemed to be moments set aside outdoors for silent, wide-open spaces, rocks and gravel, walking or sitting, staring at the languid reach and roll of the creek making its way slowly around the bend.

Today would be a good day to sit up high on a bluff or a rocky ledge somewhere, just watching the nothingness and thinking, clouds moving overhead in a lazy, but deliberate procession.

Though I feel this disconnection around me, or this gap or space, I’m not concerned with it. It is one of those things that I know nature knows about and is taking care of.

I don’t know how to explain it sufficiently, but I can embrace it nonetheless and accept it as part of the way things are supposed to be.

In general, I also feel more accustomed to the off-beat rhythm of things or the silence and the lonely places.

I know somewhere right now, there’s somebody walking along a road that has no where to go. Now there’s a person who would be welcome to walk this road with me right now.

Maybe we would talk about the world and all its screwed-up circumstances, or maybe we’d talk about nature and her bountiful beauty and inherent wisdom.

I read once that Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan went fishing together and spent a few hours along the river casting and retrieving their lines, never saying a word, with both men entirely comfortable with the experience.

Maybe it would be like that. I would certainly be alright with that.

I pick up a rock at the side of the road and feel its warmth. I close my eyes and try to let the heat permeate my being. It will maintain me for a good while going forward.

I try to store up these kinds of experiences to think about during winter’s coldest and most challenging days. In those times, I close my eyes and think back to these times, even the disconnected ones, and remembered how the days of summer melted themselves all the way down into my heart and bones.

There’s a broad-winged hawk floating above me on a thermal. It seems like he’s beckoning me to come on and go with him.

That’s alright. You go on ahead. I’ll sit here, soaking up the sunshine, the silence and the disconnectedness, waiting for the urging that will send me home again.

I hope it’s a good long wait.

Editor’s note: 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.

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