John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources

“Autumn this year is gonna break my heart, leaves start falling and the feeling starts,” – Steve Forbert

Despite so many changes that have occurred throughout my lifetime, one of the things that has remained the same is my affection for autumn.

I’ve always felt that each of the seasons has its selling points, but there’s something about fall that feels like a more magical time of the year than all the others to me.

Even though I was born in the spring, I think I imprinted like a fish on the diminishing daylight days and nights of autumn.

In some ways, fall is the end of many things and the beginning of others – the dying of the summer light and the coming of winter’s night being chief among them.

I think the start of school in the fall might be one of the reasons I got hooked on autumn as a young kid. I enjoyed school and it was fun to learn.

In those early years, it was kind of like a “Leave it to Beaver” existence for me, except it was in full color. I wasn’t hip yet that some kids had determined that learning was very uncool.

We had a nuclear family at the start, I was focused on things like football cards, bubblegum, toy cars, yo-yos, riding bikes and playing games with neighborhood kids, like hide-n-seek.

I had a toy World War II soldier that had a parachute you could wrap around him and then throw him up into the air and watch him drift down to the ground.

It then still being relatively soon after the end of World War II, most boys had toy Army soldiers and little Jeeps and tanks. This was still a handful of years before G.I. Joe dolls would become incredibly popular.There were also balsa wood airplanes we would throw, superballs, jacks and marbles.

I walked to school about six blocks each way along streets covered in fallen leaves, mostly through cooler temperatures that often had me grabbing my warmer jacket before I left the house.

I somehow felt very tightly knitted into the fabric of the seasonal changes going on around me.

There was a big oak tree along my way to school that is still there today. We used to collect acorns and save them in metal coffee cans.

Sometimes, we would shoot the acorns out of slingshots at pop cans or throw them at each other in grand battles that might stretch over an area of several blocks or yards.

Nobody ever got hurt doing that. There were strict rules against throwing anything directly at somebody’s face or head. I think that’s in the Geneva Conventions.There were big, thumb-sized yellow-green acorns and tiny chestnut-brown colored types. The caps or hats of the acorns, along with the brown oak leaves, were scattered all over the sidewalk and the road underneath this massive tree.

We’d doddle picking up the acorns on the way home from school. Some of the streets we walked down headed to and from school had tree names like Maple and Oak streets – very fall, associated species.

There was pro football to watch with my dad on television, which I loved.

On rides with my folks, we’d see dried cornstalks standing in fields along country roads while icy and wispy cirrus clouds often swirled in the crystal-blue skies. Sometimes, we’d see crows and outnumbered scarecrows in those fields too.

Front porches were decorated with orange pumpkins – some carved into Halloween jack-o-lanterns already in late September – yellow gourds and other seasonal items.

It was always a time for heady, wonderful smells, pumpkin spice, apple cider, cinnamon and the smell of downed and wet leaves in the woods.

A couple of the earliest smells I remember from growing up are the smell of being under a leaf pile in the backyard during hide-and-seek and the rich, deep earthy smell of good garden dirt.

Autumn is a time when I am particularly wide-eyed, awake and soaking in everything nature has to offer. When I do close my eyes and picture an autumnal scene, it’s often cradled in a warm orange-yellow glow – like firelight.

I think that notion is grounded in the sight of the changing leaf colors and the diminishing length of daylight that lends itself to crackling campfires and fireplace blazes where I love to sit, watch the flames flicker and poke the fire with a stick as it burns.

Reds and oranges are often referred to as warm colors, often because of the feelings they produce in humans. I read this morning that red sometimes connotates strength and passion, while orange instills creativity and enthusiasm.

I would concur with those notions. Fall helps me feel those things.

Darkness falls sooner each night and lasts longer during this time of the year, which can be a drag, but it does set the stage for earlier possible views of the northern lights or starry skies and occasional meteors.

The way time has been rushing by, if I happen to sneeze, Halloween will probably have come and gone like a ghost. Boo.

I still have been watching one relatively large bat circling the open space in our backyard each night, just before it gets dark. While the bat is fluttering around, a great horned owl has been hooting from somewhere up on the hill behind our house.

In the middle of the night, if I slip out the back door to see what’s happening, I can still often hear the owl and acorns bouncing off tree branches on their way to the ground.

Last night, there were a couple of deer that I met out there in the darkness.

I think they might have been munching up some of those acorns. I talked to the deer for a few minutes. They stood and listened. At one point, they moved closer to me before I stepped toward the back door to go inside.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were moving a tarp the wind had bunched up on the patio and an American toad about the size of a half-dollar hopped out onto the cement.

I picked it up and it peed on me, not unexpectedly, as I moved it to a safe place. I put it behind my wife’s herb planter and the brick wall of the house. It’s a place where spiders have hung a few webs, so it’s probably good for insects.

Since I moved the toad, it has been sitting in view every night when I go out. When I water the herbs in the planter, it stays still, moving back underneath the edge of the planter during the day.

What a cool little creature.

During one recent rainy night, there were three toads out there against the back of the house looking for mosquitoes and other bugs to eat. I think they like to get under the eave of the house where they can hunt for food and remain relatively dry, even during heavy rain.

I also recall, long ago, tagging along with my sister and my parents, partridge hunting during the fall. It was fun just to be outside to hear the leaves crunching beneath our feet. Cold noses and hands.

The best thing I remember was that while everything seemed very safe, comfortable and relaxing, there was an ambiguous sense that anything could happen at any time.

I would always want to be paying attention, so I didn’t miss a second of anything. I guess that must have been my innate curiosity in growing up, learning, experiencing and enjoying the life I had found around me.

That’s another thing that has stayed with me.

In the years that followed, our family would change a lot. My second sister and my brother were born and my parents divorced. The world changed too, with Vietnam, assassinations, riots and more.

Even during those turbulent years of strife and division, I don’t think any of us had any idea that America would ever be in the mess it’s in today. God help us all.

I’ve traded my Army soldiers and G.I. Joe for a fishing rod and a real Jeep, and I’ve outgrown those kid clothes. I still have some football cards.

My family moved away after the divorce except I stayed here with my dad. He’s gone now too. But I’ve got my wife, and she’s got me. We’ve got a fire pit and at least a couple of deer to talk to in the backyard.

Sometimes the season brings me a hollow sense of missing or loss or apprehension about those long, cold winter nights packing up somewhere up north or out west, right about now, getting ready to start heading this way.

But I’m not bothered by any of those bluesy things, it’s fall now. I plan to try to enjoy this wondrous and exciting season of discovery, harvest and magic – come hell or high water, tricks or treats.

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.