John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Journal columnist

“C’mon go with me babe, c’mon go with me girl, baby let’s go to the cabin down below.” — Tom Petty

The last fingers of sunlight slipped down slowly over the harbor and fell behind the blazing hardwoods along the top of the ridge, leaving shadows to fall across the gray, rocky coastline frosted with orange lichen.

When the sun went down, the temperatures dropped too. They hadn’t climbed that high today to begin with and if you got anywhere near the coastline, the brisk autumn wind off the lake cut cold right through you.

It was one of the days when the water temperature was warmer than the air. The late afternoon presented itself as a beautiful blue-sky fall day, though it wore a thin mask covering gray silvery skies and much colder and harsher winds to come.

Tonight, while I find myself in a quaint little woods cabin within sight of the bay, the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms, followed by gale-force winds tomorrow and tremendously high seas.

It’s a crossroads time of year here. Young kids headed home. Another season done. Shutting down the buildings, locking the doors. Trailering the boats to dry dock and packing away all the summer things.

I’m trying to keep warm with the help of an electric wall heater and fan, a heavy wool blanket and the open over door. I can’t believe how cold my feet are. The electric coil snaking around in the bottom of the old stove forms a red-orange glowing letter “E.”

This is the kind of place that is used infrequently by transient visitors, like me. People heading out elsewhere on assignment, catching a boat or waiting for a seaplane. I’ve got tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night before I leave.

I’m not expecting there will be much to do outside with the inclement weather.

I’m here alone.

The past half-hour or so, I’ve been passing time looking around the cabin, which has a kitchen and front room combined, a bedroom and a bathroom.

There’s a little shelf above the stove stocked with spices that seem to have been here for quite some time. One marked “Tone’s Black Pepper” is contained in a tiny red and white canister that looks like an old-time soup can.

I picked it up and read the bottom: “Best by January 2013.” Then there’s “Italian Seasoning,” a bottle of Spice Time’s naturally pure basil leaves, 5th Season’s seasoned meat tenderizer, a multi-powder container with contents ranging from cayenne pepper powder to curry powder.

In all, the shelf had 22 bottles, shakers or containers of salts, peppers and spices. At the far opposite end of the little wooden rack, there was another tiny red and white can like the one bookending it at the other side.

This canister held “Tone’s Ground Cinnamon.” The label on the maker’s mark of the .7-ounce can says “Since 1871.” I picked it up and read the bottom: Best by April 2010.

In the cupboard, there was a can of “Best Yet” (since 1893) all-vegetable shortening, some coffee pot filters, more salt and a package of Ramen noodle soup, chicken flavor, that was hard inside its package.

I’m eating a honey-crisp apple I dug out of my bag. I look across this little room seeing a wooden, oval table with three chairs, all of which match a coffee table that sits on the floor in front of the brown and gray upholstered love seat I’m curled up in.

I like this place.

Plenty of windows in this now warm room to watch the rain and the lightning — a place where thunder might rattle the roof. Spruce trees outside the window, moving in the breeze.

My dad had little camping trailer he had parked out in the woods on some land he was leasing out by a river, not far from town. The trailer was old and small, probably built in the 1950s. It could barely fit two people comfortably, but he loved to go there.

I don’t think he even stayed in the trailer much, if ever. But he used to like to go out there on a Sunday afternoon and listen to a baseball game on the radio. He’d cook something on a grill out there and eat inside the trailer when it rained.

He would feed the red squirrels, pick blueberries, let his little dog run around out there, walk up the road to the bridge or sit at the picnic table to watch the sun go down.

It was a place he could go and be and live — a restful place — like camps are to lots of folks. It wasn’t anything special, but it was special to him.

When I lived in California, he’d send me pictures of himself and most of the time they were taken out at the trailer. A couple of the years I came home I stayed out there and slept overnight. He didn’t.

I remember lying in one of the trailer beds listening to the rain on the roof. It was peaceful. This cabin tonight kind of reminds me of that time.

My dad said he always loved the sound of rain falling on a tin roof after he had spent a night in a little cabin, years and years ago, like just after the war.

Eventually, probably 20 years ago now, and 10 years before he died, the people who owned the land where my dad parked his trailer hiked up the price to where the annual lease cost more than what my dad could afford.

He had to move the trailer and he sold it. The folks who own the land still have that tiny odd-shaped slice of ground for sale all these years since. No-takers.

My former wife — the mother of my children — and I had our honeymoon in a cabin way up in the mountains above Los Angeles. That rental was a wedding gift to us. We couldn’t have afforded it.

We were very young and barely had anything figured out yet. We spent the night there opening our wedding gifts and then we went back to our little apartment in town the next day, trying to figure out what came next.

I often wonder about all these memories we all carry around. If they’re things that have happened and are done, gone and over with, why do we still remember them? Why do we still feel the emotions attached to some of them so deeply?

They must be important to us for something, but what?

I’m just not sure. I can’t figure it out. I don’t think I ever will.

I know one thing for sure, I won’t spend anymore time thinking about it tonight. I’ve hopefully got a thunderstorm to enjoy and some of Tone’s ground cinnamon and black pepper to wipe up off the countertop.

Tomorrow, even if it is storming, I hope to walk around the grounds here to see some more of this little rocky island, the big wide harbor and the path cut into the woods that winds to who knows where.

I’ve got another apple in my bag and no place to go quickly.

Editor’s note: John Pepin is the deputy public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. 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. Send correspondence to pepinj@michigan.gov or 1990 U.S. 41 South, Marquette, MI 49855.