PEPIN

“I want to fly like an eagle to the sea, fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me,” – Steve Miller

My roughouts hit the dirt and I started to walk.

Almost immediately, I could sense that the rhythm of everything around me had changed, shifted.

From the urgency and immediacy of early springtime, with its raging waters, flooded landscapes and gushing snowmelt, the beat had slowed to a steady four-four time signature.

The vibe now was consistency, and persistence – like a pupil at practice: learning, trying, advancing daily.

The grass had greened considerably and the buds on the trees were bulging and ready to pop open. It only took a couple of days of rain showers followed by some warm temperatures to produce these conditions.

Day after day, like clockwork, springtime is gradually gaining its footing, tightening its grip on this winter-battered and wind-ravaged region.

In the woodlands, with their countless leaning trunks and broken and fallen branches, the white trilliums are getting ready to bloom. The roadside ditches have welcomed once again the yellow marsh marigolds.

Brightly colored birds, the ones many people wait the entire winter to see again, have arrived in droves. Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, indigo buntings and the beloved ruby-throated hummingbirds are just some of these beautiful varieties.

The deep puddles and wet mud of the seemingly ancient two-track roads are drying up. My boots slip slightly in the sand with each impression.

In many places, the creeks and streams are back within their banks or nearly there. Waters in these ribbons of life, especially after the rain, remain higher than their traditional levels – but not much higher.

The swollen rivers wash grubs and nightcrawlers downstream toward the mouths of waiting fish. Brook trout and other species are gorging themselves on the proceeds, as well as taking advantage of early insects that float and loop in the air a little too close to the water’s surface.

And where do I fit into this landscape of beauty and wonder?

I seem to be an observer more than anything else. Humans seem to be the one creature in the forests that stick out as interlopers.

As soon as my form is visible over the top of the next ridge, a blue jay in a tree below me immediately starts his shrill warning cry, alerting all the other animals in the woods of my presence.

While I pose no measurable threat to them, the jays instinctively seem to immediately recognize humans as a threat. They certainly are as dramatic as the impressive crests of their heads might suggest.

Crows, which are in the same corvid family as jays, can distinguish between human faces and they teach that knowledge to their young. They also use their jarring calls to warn other creatures when a human face they may associate with a threat appears.

Conversely, eagles and hawks appear to be unconcerned with the presence of humans. I sit on a big white boulder along a hillside overlooking the scene, while an adult bald eagle floats in wide circles in the blue skies overhead.

Unless I were to approach their active nests or challenge them for food, these birds would never sense I was a threat to them.

I look across the landscape and see that the brown-gray understory inherited from last autumn and wintertime is slowly fading or being obscured by the green growth of emerging plant life.

The light greens, and blushed pinks and deeper reds of buds are also starting to show themselves in brushed watercolor tones across the tops of the trees. Some of the Saskatoon trees are blooming white.

Meanwhile, most of the wildflowers have yet to bloom except for those early exceptions. Once they appear, the painting is complete.

Springtime will then have changed from that persistent four-four beat, to a three-quarter-time waltz we can all dance.

This will happen just before the eclipse of summer and spring.

So, as the observer, I watch, try to discern and scribble down notes of what I see in my mind and my heart. There, they tend to linger, sometimes forever.

I think these things I experience and absorb tend to shape my perspective over time for the days and the paths ahead. I hope they cultivate resilience.

I know being in nature has a healing effect that works just by showing up and closing myself off to the noise and distractions of social intercourse.

“Just let me think about thinking about thinking.”

I keep following the two-track deeper into the woods. I’m heading down to the bridge and then farther on to the shore of the lake.

To get there, I can see up ahead that I will either have to step over or push out of the way some tree trunks across the road that are about as thick as my arm.

The woods are full of these slanted and leaning trees pushed over by harsh fall and winter storms. The forests in some of these places look like someone up above dumped out a can of Pick Up Sticks.

At the bridge, I stop to lean on the old wooden rail and follow the current downstream with my eyes. The bright sun makes it easy to see clear to the bottom of the river, but I don’t spot any fish.

I close my eyes and listen to the water slurp past the bridge abutments and roll over a stand of rocks situated in diagonal fashion just downstream from me.

In the distance, I hear the eagle let out a cry as it continues to float on the thermals of the afternoon. I’d bet he’s looking for fish too.

There are often suckers spawning here in the springtime. Not today.

The woods feel cooler as the two-track ducks into a spruce grove. There are still patches of snow under the boughs of some of these trees – artifacts of a brutal season of wither.

A red squirrel chatters loudly as I walk underneath a pine branch he’s sitting on. Another warning to the surrounding animal populace declaring that a human is present.

He keeps scolding me for being here, even as I continue toward the lake. A good distance away, I can still hear him.

The tree type changes, the closer to the lake I get. It’s now northern hardwood forest around me. I hear black-capped chickadees and a red-breasted nuthatch. Apparently, the chickadee is comfortable with my presence.

His call only includes a chick-a-dee-dee. The more “dees” there are at the end of the phrase, the more threatened the birds are.

I turn off on a side road to my left and soon I find myself along the shoreline of my chosen mighty, but isolated and serene, inland lake.

I park my butt on a driftwood log and listen to the water softly lapping against the shore. The lake is very shallow here.

It looks and feels like I could walk across the entire expanse, but I know I can’t. I scan the shoreline for moose, deer and wolves. I don’t see any.

If the ground was dryer, or the day was warmer, I’d lie down in the sand with my face in my arms folded in front of me. I’d soak up all the sun, sound and isolation I could.

I’d stay the whole afternoon, just lying on the beach like a shipwrecked castaway.

It’s only 49 degrees today, but the sunshine makes it worth it.

My little sojourn here has been good enough to distract me from wash-rinse-repeat cycle of thoughts my brain will settle on if I don’t do other things constantly.

“Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest, once upon a time in the west.”

I remember that my dad and his fishing buddy used to fish this lake. They hauled an old canoe a good distance before placing it into the water amid the driftwood ghosts on the western side of the drink.

I went with them once when I was in high school. It was a cold and rainy day, and we didn’t catch any fish. Since that time, the fish species living in the lake were replaced with new ones. There’s no longer trout here.

My dad and his fishing buddy are both dead.

It’s been a couple hours and I’m walking now along the river, where big pine trees standing along the sandy ridges that embrace this valley peer down from their varied heights.

Some of them have also been sheared off cracked or toppled with the wilds that were this past wintertime.

I keep thinking about the jigsaw pieces that won’t fit together but somehow do.

Not another person on this road today, nor any apparition.

Unless, of course, you count me.

I fade into the setting like someday’s morning mist, and then I’m gone.

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.