JOHN PEPIN

“I’m beginning on my journey now, but I’ve only gotten halfway down,” – Jim Lauderdale

I stood in the woods at night at the edge of a northern hardwood forest, listening to the stunning silence.

As is often the case, no matter how many times I get outside, the specific conditions of that place in time strike me as somehow peculiar. Perhaps it is the singularity of the moment.

After all, there has never been an exact moment like this in the past and there never will be again, at least theoretically.

I am reminded in this setting that I haven’t spent time in such a profound “silence-scape” in what immediately seems like way too long.

This kind of silence is like that reserved only for the depths of wintertime.

These types of moments no doubt inspired the term the “dead of night.”

From much earlier times, these days and hours surrounding Halloween or the switch between October and November, are all about the seasonal transition between light and dark.

This is the important time of the year when many have believed that the veil between life and the living and death and the dead is at its thinnest.

From where I’m standing here, I can certainly sense change in the air.

At eye level, the woods are dark and quiet, but as I look up to the waning gibbous phase of the moon, the clouds are being pushed by high altitude winds across its bright and almost full face.

Something is certainly on its way, and it won’t take long to get here.

In that instant, the silence cracks from a good distance back in the trees.

It’s the low, yet plaintive, hooting of a great horned owl – sending out his seemingly tired and pulsing sounds into the cold, night air.

The owl soon stops singing and the forest topples back off to sleep.

I spend this time soaking in the quiet as much as I can. I’m like a huge sponge, drinking in all the absence of presence of sound into my entire being.

This provides tremendous comfort as I feel the sensation permeate my skin and flow through my body like oxygen, and I am certain this quiet for me is every bit as much life affirming as my blood.

I need to find a place to sit down that isn’t wet to enjoy the experience even more. The ground is cold, and a place here at the edge of a sizeable boulder is perhaps more so, but I make myself comfortable.

I listen for other sounds and hear a sound not too far away in the trees. To me, it sounds like something crunching or moving between the branches about 10 or 15 feet off the ground.

I make some squeaking sounds on the chance that it might be a mouse or one or more flying squirrels searching for food. I keep hearing the sound, but no returned squeaking or high-pitched chirping of flying squirrels.

After listening to the sound for a minute or two more, I reach into my pocket for a flashlight. I focus the beam toward the sound in the night.

I am very surprised at what I see.

Big, larger-than-hand-sized, corn-bread-colored leaves are falling from a single maple tree to the ground. The sound I am hearing is being made by the rather large leaves knocking against branches and other leaves on their way down to the ground.

I’ve never really seen something like this before.

For some reason, it seems odd that the leaves were falling at night – in the way that it might seem strange that birds migrate a great deal at nighttime.

I think those are perhaps some of my ingrained remnants of human-centered thinking like the pre-Copernicus theory that the earth – rather than the sun – is at the center of our solar system and everything must revolve around us.

The second part of this scene that seemed odd to me was that no other trees were dropping their leaves. However, a closer inspection of the surrounding area bathed in the flashlight beam showed this maple was among the last to have leaves left to drop.

For some reason, this tree had been able to hold out longer than the others before it dropped its summer foliage, but when it did, it did so almost all at once.

I just happened to be there when it did. A few minutes earlier or later and I would have missed the entire display.

It’s those tiny moments like this that for some reason tend to stick with me down through the years as I continue to study and explore nature.

I already sense this night will be one I reflect on going forward as a special time.

The silence soon returns, and I strain as hard as I can to hear something – anything – from my dark, blackened surroundings. There’s nothing there to hear.

I continue to strain my hearing. Then, at what I think is about the bottom of my sound limit, I hear a weird kind of almost imperceptible clicking sound.

It continues in rapid succession and then cuts out abruptly.

My best description of the sound would be rhythmic and almost metallic “clicking.”

I wait a second or two and it starts again and then stops again a short time later. I have no idea what this is. I sounds like it is insect- or animal-based, but I want to hear more to try to discover exactly what it is.

The sound is coming from the edge of the trees near a wide opening.

I don’t get another chance to explore the sound. It doesn’t occur again. In subsequent nights I will try to hear it again, but it does not return.

Back in the woods, I am gathering in the silence, and I let it melt into me. I sense that I need to be going soon so I try to make the most of the time remaining.

I am almost ready to move when a single snowflake hits my cheek, followed by another. These are the first I’ve experienced this autumn.

The snow begins to fall softly and almost silently.

I can barely see the flakes in the air they are so small, but in a few moments, they begin to get bigger, faster falling and closer together.

The peaceful scene reminds me of the snow falling on the characters in The Wizard of Oz as they are awakened by snowflakes after nodding off in a poppy field under a spell cast by the Wicked Witch of the West.

I think to myself that I hope the snowfall will bring awakening and peace to people all over the world – there’s so much pain, suffering and seeming hopelessness now for so many. It is endlessly depressing.

We need some sort of intervention for planet Earth.

When I stand up, I look up to the moon and see the clouds still racing past the moon. There are darker clouds in the mix now too, likely those bringing the snow.

The old owl sends out a few more hoots. In my mind, he’s making some type of commentary on the snow, though I can’t claim to have any idea what exactly he might be communicating.

The ground is now becoming white, making it much easier to find my way out of these woods than it was to walk in here with darkness then falling swiftly.

The sound of my footsteps is deadened and softened by the collecting snow.

I came here with hope of finding some solace and recovery.

I have been treated to both of those things, along with other sonic and visual experiences that have again heightened my appreciation for the natural world and all its mysteries.

These are mysteries available to investigate in big and small ways every moment we exist and care to do so.

The universe remains a place stranger than we can imagine.

I plan to do my little investigative part any time I can venture past the comforts of home or the old storm door off the laundry room that leads to my little outdoors corner of the galaxy.

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.