John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources

The beach here is one of sand and stranded driftwood, with shallow and cold waters lapping against the shoreline.

I bend down to push my fingers into the water to see how cold it really is. I discover that it’s not biting cold, but it’s not welcoming either. I stand back up and continue to walk slowly down the beach.

My eyes are drawn to the various water-worn rocks lying on the sand. Some are orange and some are white, while others are dark and flat, almost like slate. Most of these stones are small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

As I move one foot in front of the other, I am struck with the feeling that I am kind of becoming numb as of late. It feels some days like I am wearing a thick, woolen sock over my head, a sock that muffles my speech and dulls my hearing.

The events of the world are certainly enough to numb a person permanently. However, I seem to be feeling this more on a personal level.

It’s kind of a lost or indirect sensation that leaves me wondering what exactly I am doing, where am I going and where have I been?

What does this “life” mean anyway?

These are all questions that bug me, questions I don’t like to constantly have on my mind, but there they remain, nonetheless.

The wind is the autumn variety that might feel warm in the sunshine, but if the sun disappears behind a cloud, the wind suddenly feels cold.

I keep walking and find a cove where the shoreline takes a dip inland.

I stop to rest on a long driftwood log that is lying on the shore. Maybe the log is taking a rest, waiting for the high water to come and lift it back atop the waves, pulling it out farther into the lake, where the water is deeper.

Free again.

Maybe I am like a piece of driftwood along this shore. The high water brought me to this beach one spring and now I have been stranded and stuck ever since the waters retreated during the summertime.

I feel the wind cut through the buttons on my jacket, letting me know that my intended defenses against the chilly autumn bluster have been undermined.

I think I am drawn to places like this because they seem big and wide open, the kind of places that can make a person feel free or free to think anyway. There are rarely any people here when I visit.

That helps too. It’s another freeing sensation to not be bothered with the piles of trivial nonsense that preoccupy a lot of what we talk about or what we do. Just dump it all in the heart of a wild and gigantic piece of forgotten north country.

That sounds good to me, like a freshening kind of brainwashing.

I see a moose track in the sand, and I start to look around me, hoping I might see what I imagine to be a massive bull lumbering up the gravel road out of here, swimming out in the middle of that cold water or simply standing in one of the wetlands up off the lake.

But there is no moose that I see.

With no great thoughts arriving, I keep walking for a while before I sit again on a driftwood log, this one down closer to ground level.

I touch the beach sand and feel its warmth, while just a few inches away, the sand is cold where it is saturated with water. Chickadees are calling from the trees behind me, joined by a white-breasted nuthatch. Their summer songs are over.

I have a shallow energy level today, though I feel like I could walk a hundred miles if it was all on dirt roads or railroad tracks. Those means of travel also bring a sense of being free to my mind and expand my possibilities when I’m thinking.

For likely no reason beyond their inherent honesty, I trust railroad tracks and dirt roads. I feel a kinship with them, especially if you include my cowboy boots in the equation too.

I think it’s strange how some days I have so much energy that I feel like I could do anything, working from dawn to way past dark. That surging kind of power feels tremendous, like you’re riding a bullet train.

You may not know exactly where you’re going, but by the time you get there, you’ll know you’ve been someplace.

Then there are days like today, with little to no energy. Even if I wanted to do something beyond combing this beach with a stick in my hand to write messages in the sand, I don’t think I could.

It’s not that I’m physically or mentally tired, but more like my batteries are run down.

I keep walking until I run out of beach in a corner where the topography turns to the west. I leave the beach along a trail that takes me into the trees and then starts moving up the sandy and brown-grassed hillside.

I keep taking a few more steps up the incline before again sitting down to enjoy the view. I get a different perspective from this place, being up above the water, the beach and the driftwood.

The sun has already moved back over my right shoulder and is thinking about setting soon down below the horizon. It won’t be long, and it will be gone. Maybe it’s a low energy day for the sun too.

It seems that way, the farther into the fall we get. The days are short, there’s less sunshine and it feels like a lot less energy. But I know that’s an illusion.

So, what else is an illusion that we take for granted?

It’s hard to say.

Some people think our whole world is an illusion, nothing more than a simulation.

If that’s true, I hope I’m doing my part to represent the reality we’re simulating in an authentic way, rather than replicating something someone told me to say in another dimension.

The sunshine is still warm, even at this lengthening hour.

My sunglasses help me not have to use my hand to block out the brightness, while the rest of me gets warmed by the sun’s rays.

I think it’s probably likely that I’m indeed like driftwood sometimes, needing a rest when I wash up along the beach, or a stop to sit in a place like this sunny hillside or the sandy beach.

In those moments, I don’t think my brain needs me to think of anything and my body doesn’t mind a little numbness while the batteries recharge just silently taking in the big everything of this place.

It doesn’t matter if I see a moose or hear those chickadees or feel the cold water of the lake on my fingers. All that matters is that I am here and so is this place.

It’s perhaps an intentional shutting down or shutting off or scuttling those things considered extraneous in these moments, trading them for a numbness however dull and unrelenting – it may be innately necessary.

It’s like when my flannel shirt gets sopped in the summer rain. There is a point where it becomes saturated and cannot hold any more raindrops, no matter their beauty or wonder.

A slow-down, a stoppage, a respite, dare I say, a retreat may not only be a necessary thing for a body and soul and heart and mind to keep moving on, but perhaps an undeniable part of regaining that energy to again ride the bullet train or walk the high wire.

A while later, I am on my way back from this place of sand and water and wide-open skies, a treelined oasis in the middle of my mental desert where I can curl up under a lean-to and nap curled up in the sand.

I still feel numb behind the wheel, but my eyes are open and I’m moving forward. I don’t have a thought in my head and the tired I wasn’t feeling before has moved in behind my eyes.

I hope the batteries are plugged back in the right way so that I will soon start feeling the energy they provide.

Meanwhile, I think about turning the radio on, but I don’t.

Right now, there’s nothing out there I want to hear.

I’ve got about another fifteen miles to go before I pull into our driveway.

I’m thankful I don’t have to walk.

I’ve got a can of pop and a meat stick to chomp on for the ride.

I cross the old river, running slow and lazy – just like me.

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.