John Pepin

(BEGIN ITALICS)

“What’s the matter with me? I don’t have much to say. Daylight sneaking through the window and I’m still in this all-night café,” — Bob Dylan

(END ITALICS)

I once read that the relationship between Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash was such that they could stand in a river fishing for hours and never speak a word to each other.

I can appreciate that arrangement and I admire the mutual respect it demonstrates.

Experiencing nature is often a deeply personal thing for me that I not only cherish, but revere on the highest level.

The nature of nature — in its purest form — to me is borne of slow transformation, metamorphosis, quiet or silent actions that occur in the span of geologic, evolutionary or adaptive time.

In my view, this, let’s call it “contemplative,” aspect of nature does not lend itself to quick movements or loud, crashing sounds. Those are other forms of nature.

The silence of standing in a river fishing is relative.

There are sounds, but they are those provided by the natural surroundings and its inhabitants — water trickling, birds singing, wind rushing through the tall grass, squirrels chattering, fishing jumping for mayflies or a turtle pushing and pulling its way through the gravel.

Each of these sounds is like a secret message to the heart, mind and soul — a message of healing, truth, resilience, recovery and renewal.

Sometimes, if you take pains to listen, you can hear the messages being conveyed between each heartbeat, each breath, each thought.

To receive these nearly imperceptible messages, it’s best to clear yourself of clutter or distractions that can scramble or interfere with the reception.

Standing silently, watching a river flow or sitting at the edge of a fire, your gaze transfixed on the soft glow of the flames, can open up pathways and deep levels of communication between yourself and nature.

Often, when I reach one of these delicate states of reception, understanding and learning, new and dramatic events can occur which take your appreciation of the natural world around you to new heights.

In this way, despite making countless journeys into nature throughout my lifetime, new things continue to be revealed to me. Animal behaviors I’ve never witnessed, plants I’ve never noticed, insects I’ve never encountered or places I’ve never stopped at to visit or explore before.

There can be so many things going on inside a person when they are communing with nature that it seems disrespectful to disturb their contemplation, reflection or reception.

My dad used to say that being in nature was his way of going to church.

I understand that, and I see that comparison as his way of attempting to describe the reverence he too must have felt on some level while experiencing nature.

Later in life, he was more inclined to be found in the Catholic church of his youth than he would be out in nature. I wonder if he somehow lost his connection or his wonder.

He might have also experienced a change in himself that left him searching for different experiences or seeking to fulfill different needs.

Either way, I’ll never know.

He’s not here to ask. Ashes to ashes.

For me, I think I would be profoundly lost without my connection to nature.

It’s the thing that keeps me aligned with the planet. Without it, I think I would drift aimlessly from shore to shore, looking for meaning and revelation.

In times of great despair, depression or confusion and uncertainty, I have learned to retreat to a grassy meadow, shaded forest glen or mountain hillside to simply sit still, wait and listen.

On most occasions, resolutions to my concern emerge from within, mixed with a fragrant breeze from the blooms in those green fields or the coolness permeating my presence from that shady glen.

Sometimes, beams of sunshine or gently falling rain will find me on the mountainside to help reveal truth deeper than I thought I was capable of discerning when left solely to my own abilities.

For me, the resounding success of these wonderful moments is belied by the almost constant struggle to simply find enough time to spend outdoors.

It is staggering to me how much time is taken up by countless activities in my life — that I participate in of my own free will — that don’t render anywhere near the understanding, happiness or satisfaction of simply sitting outside deeply imbued in nature.

Add to that the fact that time feels like it is continuously passing at a faster and faster rate, robbing me of not only time itself, but also the opportunities to fill that time with more natural experiences.

To realize that it is now nearly mid-July makes me feel like the chains have slipped off the rollers and the gears are just spinning wildly. I feel way out of sync.

Am I constantly running or am I standing still and the world is twirling at an increasingly dizzying rate, dragging me around and around with it?

Either way, I’m feeling the seasickness of a Pacific afternoon, with storm petrels over the water, no room in the upper deck and the boat headed to the Niagara-type brink situated in the middle of the ocean, where the ships at sea encounter an inevitable precipitous drop to the sharp rocks below.

To the point of no return.

So, in this pursuit of greater understanding, peace, erudition and realization through nature, there is not only a necessity for time and place, but the decluttering or clearing that I mentioned briefly above.

While intently focusing on what is happening around me in nature, I also strive to ignore, release, erase or scuttle negativity, complication and minutia that tend to clog up my brainwaves with soot.

Sometimes, I need to mentally take a broom and bang hard on the stovepipe to shake that black dirt back down into the firebox, where it can be properly consumed by the next night’s fire.

Often, at this stage in the game, I can clear my head just by putting my boots on a dirt road and starting to walk or by sitting myself within the glory and majesty of any of a million or more different sweeping, panoramic landscapes.

The hardest part of all this for me remains getting out there.

Once I do that, the clearing usually begins almost automatically on numerous levels, including some that I believe are imperceptible.

When it’s time to go home, if there is no deadline or self-imposed time in place, nature usually lets me know.

I know that sounds strange, but I think it’s true.

The feeling I get is that I go into the outdoors usually deeply craving experience, resolve, knowledge or boosting of my spirit and mindset.

Once those things are achieved, a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment comes over me that settles into my bones usually for a good long time.

It’s like thirsting wildly for a jug of water in the desert and then, after walking for miles at an increasingly slowing pace, arriving at a shady oasis with plentiful cold water to drink.

After the water is consumed, the satisfaction is often enough to get a person back out there on the hot and dusty trail again — this time, with a full canteen and maybe even something to eat to spare.

More and more, as the world turns at this crazy pace, with the insanity of our human circumstances, I find myself looking to return to nature on a consistently more frequent basis.

I don’t know how to better confront the challenges we face day to day here in this often-sickening place. Standing in a stream fishing for hours while not saying a word, that most certainly would work for me.

That depiction and the explanation conveyed here maybe comes closest to me to explaining what anglers and hunters mean when we say that it doesn’t really matter if we catch any fish or shoot any game.

The best thing about nature is finding yourself there — in both senses of that phrase.

Outdoors North is a weekly column written by John Pepin and 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.