I’m sitting at a picnic table in the camping area at McLain State Park. It’s Sunday, warm out, blue sky overhead and Lake Superior is just a little bit choppy from the breeze. This is a familiar spot, this picnic table or others like it. I have sat at this table, or one in a camp site up or down the row from it at some point during each of the past five summers.

But even when I first visited the park, seven or so years ago, the place struck a note of familiarity. State parks have characteristic attributes that are shared, seemingly, universally. Parks in the Lower Peninsula (Muskegon State Park, Ludington State Park, others); in Wisconsin (Point Beach State Forest, Kettle Moraine State Forest); even state parks along Oregon’s Pacific coast strike familiar chords for me.

Sometimes the familiarity is in natural elements. Each of the Michigan state parks I mentioned is situated on a Great Lake, and it seems like I remember seeing red pine trees at like those at McLain State Park growing in Muskegon.

Subtle cues in the parks’ built environment are also held in common from park to park and from place to place. Camp sites are nearly always arranged as series of conjoined loops. Brown painted signs with yellow lettering are ubiquitous.

These commonalities would seemingly form only a thin substructure on which to build a sense of the familiar. But really, our memories are built from just such scattered fragments of consciousness.

This Sunday, I am leading a hike with the Peter Wolfe Chapter of the North Country Trail Association on a section of the North Country National Scenic Trail which I have never hiked before. The trail segment is located just south of Rousseau, starting at Forest Road 1100 and heading eastward.

In leading this hike, I am counting on subtle sensory cues – blue blazes, to be specific – not only to show the way, but to tie this piece of trail meaningfully to the wider North Country Trail experience. The NCT stretches from western New York State all the way to eastern North Dakota. Along all that distance, a simple device marks the way: a sky blue, vertical, rectangle.

The blue blaze.

“Nelson Boundary Blue” is the official name for the color. These blazes have served to unify my scattered experiences on the NCT. They have been concentrated in relatively wild country in the Western U.P., but I have encountered blue blazes in downtown Marquette, Lowell, and Battle Creek, Michigan. The blazes have led me through forests in Newaygo County and north of Petoskey; along the Lake Superior shore east of Munising and out past Sugarloaf Mountain west of Marquette.

At times, I have stumbled upon the NCT unexpectedly. Such was the case when I found blue blazes in the middle of the Cereal City in the fall of 2004. The blaze helped the town resonate with my past experience, reconciling city and backwoods – or at least stirring the two together – in my memory.

You should come along on Sunday’s hike. It will be about three miles long over what looks like, on the map at least, relatively flat terrain. If you have been on the North Country Trail before, the blue blazes will resonate for you.

If you haven’t, the hike will give you a new, subtle association that will resonate when you find yourself on the trail again sometime in the future. Meet at the west side of the Copper Country Mall parking lot at noon to carpool. Or meet up with us at the Forest Road 1100 trailhead. We should be there by 1:15.