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"In the light you will find the road, you will find the road," -- John Paul Jones/Robert Plant/Jimmy Page
Today must be one of this winter's coldest days.
I feel like I'm stranded about halfway or more up an incredibly long staircase that bends and twirls ever upward.
Icy mist swirls around those heights ahead as the staircase continues.
I don't know where it's headed, but it feels too far to keep climbing and too far to go back down. It's so steep.
For some reason, if I smoked cigarettes it seems like this would be a time that I would have one. So instead, I guess I'll sit here to catch my breath for a few minutes.
Looking up the stairs, at the farthest point I can see, it looks like the whole structure shifts and turns off to the left, still rising.
The view back down offers only the individual steps, cast in shadows, eventually
disappearing into darkness. I feel as though I am inside the Nancy Drew book "Mystery
of the 99 Steps."
The cover of that book shows Nancy and cohort George Fayne opening an old wooden door at the base of a long, narrow flight of stairs. At the top, way up there, back in the distance, there's silhouetted figure of a woman.
The color paintings on the covers of the Nancy Drew books were so cool. They were almost as good as album covers to just sit and stare at before or after I'd get done reading for the day.
In fact, the cover for "Mystery of the 99 Steps" was voted No. 3 on a recent Top 10 list for best Nancy Drew covers.
A black-and-white drawing on the inside pages of the book, No. 43 in the series, shows Nancy sitting next to a man, with a man dressed in Middle Eastern garb glancing at them from behind a potted palm.
The caption reads: "Suddenly Nancy spotted the mysterious Arab."
A precede to the book promises: "How Nancy unearths the mystery of the 99 steps will hold the reader spellbound with suspense."
Well, there you have it.
Consider me spellbound, yet again.
Here on the staircase, I'm kind of lightheaded and kind of down inside at the same time. Maybe this is what they mean by "dizzying heights."
The sun came out yesterday and even melted some snow. It was truly glorious to see and even better to feel.
Today, Mr. Gray Sky has returned with a few of his wintry friends -- namely Old Man Winter, Dr. Ice and Senor Frio.
The merciless wind is a skin ripper, and the temperature is somewhere in the lower teens. Snowflakes are the dusty kind that are light and caught up in the gusting, cold air.
Taking even a short breath, my air is cut off. I feel as though I am choking. My chest tightens and I zip my jacket all the way up to the top.
I see two deer ahead of me out in the woods. They are just standing still. They aren't doing anything, just standing there breathing. Maybe they're on the staircase too.
It's strange. I would think that in weather conditions like these, deer would be bedded down somewhere warm and out of the breeze, like under the branches of some dense conifers.
Nope. I guess not.
I take a drink of some hot chicken noodle soup. It tastes good, but the usual warm and glowing I get eating it isn't there. I take a few more sips, fish out the noodles and the chicken pieces.
I then save the rest of the broth for the drain in the kitchen sink.
Off-beat, off-kilter, just off.
Sometimes, connection isn't there. Even in nature. Rather, it's there, but it's not as easy to find as I'd like it to be. To be clear, it's not nature's fault, of course.
In times like these, it's usually some sort of clog in my brain, in my thinking.
Something stuck, choking off the free flow of essentials.
I sense that maybe recognizing that fact is perhaps the first step out of my malaise.
I recall the night before.
After the sun had been out during the day, the stars returned at nighttime.
Above the decidedly frigid scene down here of bare trees and snow-covered buildings reaching up to the skies, the billions of stars hung twinkling in their ancient constellation patterns -- a fantastic and inspiring sight for all who care to look to see.
I am disappointed that I didn't take the time to linger and look much myself. Maybe another contributor to my current hang-up.
I should've stayed outside and lit a fire in the fire pit.
Had I done that, I might not be suffering with this head fog or clog or misfiring spark.
I have a bunch of apple tree limbs that were brought during a fall ice storm piled on the fire pit. To light a fire in there now, I would need to pull all the limbs out and build a blaze up from the cold bottom.
The fire pit is covered with snow, with the apple branches still sticking out.
I decided this is more of a weekend, nighttime idea to experience.
So, I postpone. I wait. I forego.
Again, delay.
Stuck. Dragging.
The woods would be quiet today, if not for the wind.
I would rather be outside fishing, hiking or doing just about anything with the temperature dropped down into the cellar well below zero than to be out trying to do something in a blustery, wintry wind.
The wind can ruin anything, especially when mixed with a cold, hard rain.
I recall a hike I took with my boys to a curtain of ice frozen over an embankment out in a wilderness valley, many years ago.
The temperature was down to about -10 degrees by the time we were finished. But I remember the sounds of our laughter and joy. We were warm and toasty in our winterwear.
I think despite their being born in California they have retained some inherited thick, Yooper blood. Both of my boys moved from the warmth of Los Angeles to the snowy Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
My grandkids are growing up knowing snow. I love that thought.
I have a photograph from that day of the three of us hiked together that I cherish greatly. That day was so icy cold and clear.
I remember the sun going down early, bringing up a beautiful evening sky and moon.
Today's sky is like a thick gray, down comforter that instead brings cold and a hollow, sinking feeling.
It's suffocating.
But it won't bury me. Just the few warm coals of memories and ideas I've recalled here will keep my fires burning long past springtime.
The sun is coming out again tomorrow. Whatever gray skies pass our way, will eventually move away.
That's one good thing about change being constant, there are forever new things happening to think about, read about, see and do.
I will plan to get out into that sunshine tomorrow and walk and breathe in the fresh air and soak up the sunlight. I will replenish my soul and trade my gray, suffocating comforter for a serape of glistening colors and reflections, all golds, reds, yellows and silvers, shining like the sun itself.
From a high, craggy peak I will look out over the blue, white ice-covered lake and recall its green-blue mirrorlike appearance from a summer's day.
Perhaps I will be joined by singing evening grosbeaks or a friendly, red-breasted nuthatch. They are often willing to approach within a couple of inches to say hello.
Sunlight, moonlight, star light, star bright. I think everything in my head today is all about light. I need more light, and less darkness.
Flip the switch. Light the lantern. Fire up that fireplace.
People used to say they'd walk a mile for a Camel cigarette.
I still wouldn't do that.
But I know I'd walk down or up more than 99 steps for a light.
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.