John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources

Out in the wind today, I heard November knocking on the door with a tap of her fingernails at first and then with a louder bang that pounding of a little, clenched fist.

Impetuous, wild and unpredictable as she is, I told her she would have to wait until her time had come. This was still the time of the Hunter’s Moon.

I watched her as she blew away on the chilly lift of a gust that took her over a barbed wire fence and down across a meadow, into the valley and beyond.

As she stared at me passing, her face was young and new, but her power was weak, like that of an old woman — weary and withered.

In a few more weeks, she’ll be back with a force strong enough to tear sheet metal off a barn roof or to rip down a tall oak or maple from its promontory at the top of a ridgeline.

For doubters, the canyons and the creeks below are littered with the cracked and rotted remains of once mighty beeches and other denizens of these northern forests who fell in other autumns.

So, for now, I’ll keep her at a distance and bid her back with my upraised right hand.

While I may don a raincoat, I won’t go to the shoreline today.

If I were to appear at a place like that, she would see it as me offering an opportunity for her to flash by in dazzling glances, twists and turns, showing herself off by pushing gusts of cold wind up over the crashing and cascading waves.

Instead, I’ll head for the interior to look for a seasonal treat that I wait excitedly for each autumn season – one that is mellow and easy going down.

With most of the leaves now fallen to the ground, that showy season has past with all its brilliance, fading and eroding after only a handful of days in some places, chased away by the wilds of an early snowstorm.

This treasured event I’m seeking lags every year, which helps me anticipate its occurrence more and, in most years, is a phenomenon well worth waiting for.

I am talking about the dazzling gilding of the bogs in northern forests by the turning of the tamarack needles to their gorgeous shades of butterscotch yellows.

I slowly rumble over a pot-holed dirt road that limps along the edge of a creek that rushed wildly in the spring, but now has slowed to a flat flow one can scarcely detect.

I drive my Jeep around a tight corner and see a bridge over the river before me with rusted and bent rails, chipped and cracked abutments and wooden decking splintered and torn.

All this and it still stands and still works.

Should I ever live to be its age, I would only hope to be as efficient. It bears my safe passage across the clear creek, sorted gravels and its many half-submerged boulders.

Around another bend or two and I reach the place where I pull the Jeep over at the side of the road and slowly get out.

I see the sides of the dirt road are glimmering with this golden fleece fallen from the fluffy and airy tamarack boughs.

Many people know the tamarack, or eastern larch, as the only tree with needles that drops them in the fall. The small cones it bears are hunted by crafters who use them for holiday decorations, including wreaths and centerpieces.

Winds help tamaracks reproduce by blowing pollen from male to female cones. Six months after the seeds are pollinated, they will be released by the tree to help grow new tamaracks.

The pretty, little cones are positioned an inch or so apart along the length of branches.

The trees are favored by porcupines that feed on the tree’s inner bark, red squirrels eat their seeds and snowshoe hares eat the tree’s seedlings.

In turn, some birds, like great gray owls, prey upon the small mammals that live in and around tamaracks. Other bird species, including Nashville warblers and white-crowned sparrows use these trees to build their nests in.

Timbermen can make poles and fence posts out of the trees, but they don’t represent a large portion of the forest products industry.

Indigenous peoples have many applications for tamarack trees. The needles and roots can be used to brew tea. Medicines can be made from tamaracks to reduce fevers and treat wounds.

Common pests, ranging from eastern larch beetles to heart rots and larch sawflies, can damage or destroy tamarack trees.

Tamaracks are a species with several names, including hackmatack and black, red, American and Eastern larch. These medium-sized trees that can grow to more than 30 feet tall and have reddish barked trunks about two feet thick, can live to be about 300 years old.

I wish I had a good use for the inch-long golden needles that fall from the tamarack trees in the autumn. They fall to the ground in luxurious piles that look somewhat like sawdust, but the color is more golden.

I have often taken photographs of the tamarack needs and nothing else in the frame. The texture and color of these needles is enough for me to just look at with wide-eyed adoration.

It’s almost as though I am a miser, an accumulator, a cheeseparer. I can sit in the middle of a pile of the stuff, reach out my arms and pull as much as I can toward me.

Look at all my gold.

I just realized a strange coincidence while writing this that hit me in the head with a weird thud. Another thing, beyond actual gold, that I might be willing to perform this same behavior with is the golden deliciousness of macaroni and cheese.

It too is golden and has an indescribable goodness.

Of course, I would spare whatever tamarack duff was needed for the animals of the forest or the man or woman who wants to stuff a special pillow for their spouse, but again I say while sitting and playing in this yellow and amazing substance – look at all my gold.

I also just thought of something I should have thought of a long time ago. I should bring home some of the golden needles to adorn my bookshelf encased in a fancy glass container of some kind – wonderful idea.

I lingered in this spot for easily a half an hour, just admiring the trees. No one passed by on the road to disturb me. If the birds were chirping or singing, I didn’t hear them.

In a strange way, for me, this is the kind of moment I hope I’m in when the world ends, so peaceful, aware, calm, grateful and happy.

To try to capture the glory of the tamaracks in a photograph is difficult to do. It’s like trying to match the beautiful colors of a brook or brown trout with a mere manmade contrivance, no matter how good it is, it falls short.

I know of many other places like this one. Places I could spend days and even weeks just wandering around through the bogs and down these old dirt roads with little to eat and less to think about.

At some point, I got back in the car reluctantly and turned the Jeep around. Over the old, dilapidated bridge I went, and it wasn’t a very long time before I was set to turn back out onto the big, old highway.

Even while whipping past at a good clip, the beauty of the tamaracks was shining through from the wetlands that dotted and spread across the wide landscape. There is no stopping the beauty of these trees at this time of year.

I would bet that even those who may not know what tamaracks are can’t help but notice them as they move around through this wondrous, rugged region.

In that way, they remind me of the stunning, red and shiny glory of the winterberries that won’t be too far from appearing before us in large numbers. As the name suggests, they will be here even after the snows and storms of November.

She’s out there again right now, someplace in the trees, tapping her fingernail and dragging it across the hard rock surface of a cold night sky.

Again, I whisper that it’s not time yet. I turn on my bootheel and walk in the opposite direction. I move toward the back door and she cuffs me against the back side of my head with a cold gust of wind.

I laugh to myself and hear the storm door hit the frame behind me, with the gales of November remembered.

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.