PEPIN

“There’s a pale moon waning as the blackbirds dot the sky, but the crows are my friends and I wave to them a-passing by,” – Otis Gibbs

A crow floats down into the wintry scene. His presence cracks the moment like a light bulb dropped on the kitchen floor. He looks lost or out of place somehow.

After he perceives there are no threats, he begins to walk, stopping occasionally to poke his impressive beak through the snow searching for something to eat.

Crows will munch just about anything, which is good, because food is hard for them to find during the winter.

Against the soft, white snow covering the rolling landscape, the crow’s hunched appearance pops starkly out of the scene.

The bird looks sophisticated and regal — like he’s wearing a funeral suit with his hair slicked well into place for the solemn occasion — though the one place I’ve seen these birds look most at home is in a countryside cornfield.

I’ve seen crows along the shoulders of blacktopped highways in the Mojave Desert in California. With the temperature over 100 degrees, the crows walk panting with their beaks open.

Given their black feathers and the burning sun, I half expected to see one burst into flames. They certainly looked out of place there too.

Within a minute or so, I watch another crow join the first bird and then another soon follows. I think they are clearly very resilient and adaptable to a range of various scenarios.

They are also very smart. They can remember the face of a human being who does them wrong, and for those who feed them or befriend them, they are known to leave gifts — shiny objects, bones or sticks, small tokens of appreciation.

I have heard it can take more than a year to earn the trust of crows. There are three I have been trying to make friends with over the past few months.

They are still skittish and fly off easily, but they at least now let me approach the window before they take off, when they are out picking up seeds and small pieces of suet discarded by woodpeckers and blue jays underneath our bird feeders.

Maybe by this summer, my three crow friends will let me sit outside and feed them unsalted peanuts in the shell. It’s one of their favorite foods.

A simple thing like that would mean a lot to me. I think right now, I still remind them too much of a scarecrow. Crows are problem-solving, social birds who can sometimes extend their friendships to others, including humans.

On a big curve in the county road, high-line poles and fence posts bend with the blacktop. Past the fence, the snow covers a big, wide field I have been driving or riding past, since I was a boy.

I wonder how long a fence post lasts if it isn’t damaged in some way. According to the Internet, it ranges from 5 to 25 years, depending on the type of wood, treatment and conditions present in the surrounding environment.

So that would mean that the fence posts that held up the barbed wire and marked the property, keeping the cows inside when I was a kid aren’t the same ones that are here now. Even though many are withered and gray, they’ve probably been switched out at least a couple of times since then.

For whatever reason, I like this old corner, and I stop here sometimes in the spring and summer just to listen to the bugs and the birds singing to each other across the green grassy field.

There’s a lot of places like this for me. Some of them have distinct topography or attractive vistas. Others might have a stand of white birches or poplar trees.

There are others that are quiet, lonely windswept places or old red dust destinations where the grown-over railroad tracks still glint silvery in the sunshine.

Places of crumbling, historic or other significance can be places I like too — old bridges, churches, schools, farmhouses, orchards, homesteads and the like.

Sometimes, I like to sit and try to hear the ghosts of these places whispering from behind the broken-down walls or the craggy and gnarled apple tree branches.

If I was described in a field guide to humans, the text might say that I am often found in or attracted to places of obsolescence — broken windows, busted doors and dilapidated structures all somehow feel right to me.

These places are also sites well-suited to crows. Their calls, plaintive and simple, characterize the loneliness you can find here. It’s stark and abject.

Riverbanks are a big draw for me, even if I don’t have a fishing pole with me. The sounds, taste, movement and smell of the water all produce feelings of relaxation and freedom.

Of course, the creeks and streams draw the attention of animals too, which are always fun to see — sometimes minks and otters, other times, white-tailed deer, rabbits and beavers.

My rough-out cowboy boots don’t like the six inches of snow on the road this afternoon. They are absorbing the moisture. They need a spray of waterproofing.

For now, until my feet get wet, I’m warm in my deep winter jacket. The winds have gone out behind the trees to hide. That’s fine by me.

I don’t think I’ll see the sunshine today. I expect that kind of thing at this latitude in these Northwoods winters. I can keep walking, thinking and moving. Once in a great while, I come up with something worth remembering.

These days, I have more to think and so much less to say. Silence is indeed golden. The various masks of youth have fallen off long ago, like withered snakeskins. I don’t miss any of them. They scratched and pinched my skin and presented my face in less than artful forms.

After weathering recent blizzard conditions, it’s nice to be outside with no wind blowing at all — like being on the leeward side of an island, with just the warming sunshine and the warm sand all around.

Continuing further up the road, I see a blue jay glide over the road into the trees on my left. I hear a handful of evening grosbeaks singing, but I don’t see them. There’s also a woodpecker tapping on the trunk of a tree in the distance.

Deer tracks cover both edges of the road. Winter is often a soft and quiet time, with the snow and ice clamping down cold across the countryside. It can also be a lonely time, a time of deep desperation drawn out by the nature of the season’s darkness and relative emptiness.

If there is any season that is likely to run down the batteries of my life force, it’s going to be winter. As that thought comes to mind, I see a crow flapping its wings above the trees ahead of me.

He caws down to me loudly. Maybe my crow friends told him that I sometimes I have peanuts to hand out. Not today, buddy. Sorry. He keeps following the snow-covered road as he flies.

He stops cawing and is soon out of sight.

I really would like to know what he was trying to communicate to me. Was he saying hello? Announcing my presence to the rest of the woodlands or something else?

I guess I’ll never know. Maybe he was telling me my boots could use a spray or two of waterproofing. I’ll bet that’s it.

I can smell the pine trees and the balsam fir.

Even with the help of my senses, I am having trouble getting the stimuli to absorb down into my psyche. Most times, it comes so naturally, I don’t have to think about it, it just happens.

Today is one of those times when I return to the place where I witnessed a great happening or was struck with a revealing epiphany that now fails to reappear. It feels out of reach.

I think I have too many things on my mind, tracked in like dirt from the dire and saddening events going on all around us.

I can smell the rot and corruption, as the darkness seeps inside a little farther each day. It’s a lonely wintertime indeed.

But I’m going to light a candle and put it in the window, and I will not go gently into that dark night.

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.