John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources

“You cry and moan and say it will work out, but honey child I’ve got my doubts. You can’t see the forest for the trees,” – Michael Nesmith

It was another in what has turned out to be a rather extended period of warm and humid days, which are often in short supply in summertime in these great north woods.

The door to my Jeep made a thud soon after it left my hand, and I turned my head away to find the back end of the vehicle to open-up the lift door.

I sat on the floor of the back cabin area and pulled my fishing chest waders on, stretching the straps over my shoulders and clicking the fastener teeth into the locking mechanism.

I adjusted the tension on the straps to make them tighter, happy with the realization that I must have lost a few pounds.

At this time of the season, the woods are like a South American jungle with enormous green walls of vegetation hanging and reaching and pulling, obscuring views of just about everything else.

The hot temperatures, high humidity and associated heat index add to the feeling of a jungle or a greenhouse. I expect to see extravagant exotic birds and hear the screeching and laughing of monkeys in the trees.

I might have to sleep with some cheesecloth over my face to keep the mosquitoes away so the malaria or the yellow fever won’t get me. It seems like I should soon be encountering some poisonous snakes and spiders ready to zap me.

I anticipate waking to monsoon rains falling and being naked and afraid.

I might have to rethink this whole thing and see if they have room for me on the Jonny Quest plane to fly away to some beach bungalow where I can work on science projects with Hadji while Jonny rides a camel. Maybe we’ll even solve a mystery.

During these August jungle days, there are spiraled and grabbing yellow-green vines, usually at roughly hip level, whose tendrils tend to catch the crank on my reel as I try to carry my fishing rod through the bush.

Along these informal and overgrown fishing trails, there are also much thicker vines that often stretch across the front of my thighs trying to hold me in place and prevent me from passing, as though I were the giant, Gulliver.

When several of these vines are growing close to each other, their combined strength is impressive. Bursting through them — again like Gulliver — feels good until I encounter another group a short distance ahead of me, and more after that.

There are hidden hazards from head to toe during this lush season. To me, wearing chest waders is a good idea to aid in walking and to help keep bugs like deer ticks away from my skin.

I remember one spring I took a walk through the bush to get to a trout stream and, only wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt, I had more than a dozen ticks on me from my midsection on down by the time I got back to my Jeep.

I pulled a pair of waders on before the next stop and when I returned to the vehicle, I didn’t find even a single tick on me. Thank you, chest waders.

Thick green foliage can easily cover potentially hazardous things at the face and head level, like sharp thornapple spikes, dead and broken alder branches with pointy ends and unseen thistles grown now to incredible heights.

At ankle level, there is poison ivy and thicker branches and logs that are either growing or have fallen across the trail.

Out of sight, they are capable of tripping and sending a person several feet forward into a tumble to the mud or the deep grass, or the waiting arms of the next hungry and thick growth of bushes.

Of course, I have fallen on several occasions over the years, usually at least once every other fishing season on average, so, I know how it feels.

It is very unexpected and the whole thing from contact through the forward momentum and the descent into the landing can happen within only a few seconds.

It reminds me of spills I took when riding my bicycle as a kid.

It’s surprising how much scraping and tearing you can do to your blue jeans and your skin in just the time it takes to brace yourself for the impact.

Depending on the material waders are made from, they can offer little or no real protection against punctures or jabs from sticks.

However, a heavy pair of waders can help make the imposing vegetation slide off to the sides of me as I move forward through the greenery.

I find the place I know where the makeshift trail skirts around the trunk of a tree and I am into the relative clearing of an open meadow.

Even here, the grass is chest high, concealing places where beavers have dug trenches and holes in the ground. The dirt roadsides are covered with nodding wildflowers and blackberry brambles.

Hello, black-eyed Susan — always a sight for sore eyes.

By the time I reach the riverbank at the places I know the fish like to visit, I am content to sit down as I cast my line into a deep hole with a lazy, slow current.

If the worm on the end of my line looks good to a fish, I’m ready.

If not, I’m ready to just sit here.

I saw a sign in Wisconsin recently put up by a bait seller.

It read, “Our worms catch fish or die trying.”

That was worth a grin to me.

Sitting on this bank of sand and dirt, my waders prevent the butt of my blue jeans from getting wet or covered in mud. It is an unintended use, but it’s helpful to me all the same — like holding up an old house window with a paint-stirring stick.

It feels good to smell all the scents of the plants growing all around me. It smells like some type of subtly aromatic herb or spice house.

Everything is grown in so much, even parts of the stream are overgrown or crowded by trees and bushes, shrubs and low growth. There are vines here that have inched their way slowly across the sand to find the water.

There are still mosquitoes and other bugs dancing in the air above the water, but not like earlier in the year.

I push my hand back through my hair. I am sweating, which gives me with another reason, if I needed one, to sit still and take in my surroundings.

I begin to assess and reconcile my situation and the circumstances that brought me to this lonesome riverbank all by myself.

Did I really push through all that vegetation, working myself into a sweat and risking injuries untold, just to catch a few fish?

Well, in a round-about way, yeah maybe.

More to the point, I think it was to find this place of solace and resignation where the only voices I hear are those of the forest creatures, the river sirens and the soft wails of the forest ghosts — gone but not forgotten.

I can also hear myself think, which sometimes becomes a top-dollar, high-shelf luxury I can’t afford to buy.

In those frustrating times, it feels like my skull is going to fray and unravel at the seams, like a baseball, and all the rubbery string will come flopping out.

To keep that from happening, I need to get to these places where Nature can do her work to sew and mend those fault lines running under everything inside me.

It truly is a miraculous thing that simply being outside in a quiet place, whether in the sunshine or the rain, can dissolve my stress and anxiety.

In my deliberation, I decided I didn’t come here because I wanted to see the forest for the trees, to catch fish or test the resilience of my chest waders.

Rather, it was to experience the peace and tranquility that’s so alive and thriving here.

I’d bet that if a tree falls in these woods and there is no one here to hear it, it makes a tremendous whooshing and then crashing noise.

But I’d also wager that if a person sits in meditative contemplation, in tune with the world around him or her, three dozen trees could fall, and that fortunate soul would hear nothing beyond the soft sounds of the water moving past and the slow stirring of the wind as it sings.

I know why I came here.

I know why I will stay as long as I can.

When the setting sun tells me it’s time to go, I’ll leave contented and refreshed with a quiet resolution written on my heart that I will soon return.

Searchers find, finders keep, keepers win.

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.