JOHN PEPIN

“Where I come from, lotta front porch sittin’,” –Alan Jackson

There’s a small, gray planter box in my windowsill at my office that contains thick and lush, bright-green grass about 4 inches tall – made of plastic. It was a gift from a coworker that is intended to always remind me of spring.

I like never having to water it, though it does have a coat of pandemic office-absence dust on it now that I need to brush off. Plastic and dusty or not, it does do the trick of bringing my mind back to those warming, beautiful green-grass days of May.

That’s especially true when I contrast the grass against the white snowbanks and slumping gray skies waiting just outside the double-sided panes of glass in the window.

That can be a very good thing when wintertime sunlight is in short supply and the temperature has dipped down below the horizon line – that demarcation between cold and too damned cold.

The window also has a screen. Now that is something too that speaks to me of spring and summertime, warm temperatures and fragrant breezes filled with lilac, cherry and apple blossom perfume.

I love pushing the window glass back and letting the summer air drift in the room. It’s kind of like getting to be outside, even if I’m working from my desk.

I think window screens and screen doors are things we take for granted and don’t give much thought to, but I can easily recall most screen doors I’ve been acquainted with.

I fondly remember the red-painted trim on the wooden-framed screen doors on the back and front of my grandma’s house when I was very young.

The house had a nice porch for sitting and eating lunch or dinner on and the screen door leading from the living room to the outside was like a gateway for me.

I was all about doing things outside, even just being outside, riding my tricycle down the narrow concrete walkway to the gate, playing with the hose, taking my first looks at red hawkweed, yellow buttercups and other flowers that popped up through the grass on that big, fenced-in front lawn.

The screen door at our house at home was a white, aluminum storm door that was on our enclosed front porch. There was a thick, heavy wooden door leading outside and the storm door was placed on the house ahead of that.

The wooden door had several glass panes in it. There were peel-and-stick squares of carpeting on the floor of the porch. The storm door had a screen for summertime that could be replaced with a glass pane during winter.

The porch itself drew a lot of sun from the west side in the late afternoons as the sun went down. There were 10 windows, all with screens and storm windows. The porch had a glider that I loved to lay on and feel the breezes come through the porch windows and screen door.

As a kid, I used to like to lay out there on the glider and read.

I remember that at one time, the screen in the storm door wore out and got torn. It wasn’t replaced for quite a while. I also recall the window getting pelted with eggs one October devil’s night.

Among of my most prominent memories of that screen door was how it had a cylinder on the inside that stalled the door from slamming shut.

That would give my brother and I enough time to “take off” out of the house after dinner and be halfway down the street before the door slam would let my mom know we had gone outside when we were told to stay in.

We knew we’d be facing a hiding when we got in, but we didn’t care. The feeling of running down that street laughing is still exhilarating to even think about now.

This was all stuff that happened before I turned 12 and my brother turned 8.

Our fishing poles were kept out in the corner on that front porch. There was an old black-and-white television set there too that should have been brought to the dump, but instead it sat there for decades.

There was also a metal Bancroft Dairy milk box the milkman would put cartons of eggs, milk, eggnog and butter in. The box would keep the food cold until we could put it in the refrigerator.

There was also a mail slot in the front part of the porch, next to the front door, where my dad would run an extension cord out to the battery warmer in his car.

I also have recollections of listening to the radio: to music and baseball games on those porches. At my grandma’s and aunt’s houses, sitting on the porch meant watching cars go by.

It’s strange, but watching cars go by, like watching a river flow, is a real thing that people do or did. Personally, I still do these things when I get out in the woods or sit in my rocking chair outside our house.

I am not sure why springtime and summer are on my mind.

I did have a flash of wide-awake, memory-dream this week of being on the trout stream with the streamside plants grown up chin-high like late summertime and me and Da Coaster King dropping our lines while sweltering in the heat.

I feel like there’s plenty more winter for me to enjoy before spring arrives. This is one of those winters where I feel as though I am completely in sync with the season.

The winter seems to be passing just as it should, not overly long or short. It also has had its storms, deep snows and sub-zero cold – all things that a winter should have.

I have plenty of wintry outdoors things left that I still want to do, or do more of, before the season ends. In some ways, it feels as though it’s just getting started.

The holidays are a tremendous distraction for me. It’s not until they are over that it seems I can settle down into the quiet of wintertime.

I have been taking at least one hike a week, on track for my 52 hikes over the 52 weeks of this year. I have been accompanied on most of these outings by the lovely Queen of Shebis.

I have a couple of snowshoe hikes I’ve promised myself since summer left to get to. I have plans for ice fishing and visiting some frozen waterfalls.

But most of all, I just need to be outside to hear the roaring silence and breathe the cold, clean air. I need to get enough in my lungs to last me into summertime when I will then spend balmy afternoons recalling the fresh, cold air of winter.

Green grass in winter, cold air and snow in summer are good contrasts for me to help keep my mind clicking on its proper course.

A few nights ago, the temperature was well below the horizon line. I went outside to the backyard. The night was deathly still. It seemed like everything was frozen stiff.

When I walked, the snow that had fallen so softly a day or so earlier now crunched loudly beneath my feet. I listened for the sounds of an owl or a wolf or a coyote.

There was nothing at all.

The skies were clear, but the stars seemed to be out of reach and almost out of sight, cast in a hazy chill that likely reached all the way up to their high, astronomical perches.

The smell of woodsmoke was in the air. If I exhaled, it seemed like my breath could hang suspended, reaching all the way across the backyard, like it was a dragon’s fire.

It was an exquisite time to be outdoors and to just be alive.

A couple days before that, my head jerked around before I knew it on my way walking back from the mailbox. From my neighbor’s trees across the road, I heard a robin.

I know there are always a handful at least of robins that hang out in some places over the winter, but I still was not expecting to hear that sound. It shattered everything around me like ice.

I stood listening to it for a few minutes before returning to the house, smiling.

Springtime will be here soon enough. Purple martins have already reached Florida on their flights north from South America. They should be back to our northern Michigan shores, though very limited in numbers here these days, about the first week of May.

But for now, it’s time to behold and enjoy all the magic of winter.

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.