“Babe, I’ve got to ramble, you know I’ve always got to ramble.” – Anne Bredon

I was headed east and south from the once-great copper mining lands scattered up and down hills and ridges across the western part of this still rugged and wild region.

As I often will, I took a turn off the main highway to give me a slower, more enhanced traveling experience that would allow me to stop when I want to experience things around me.

This southerly route is 20 miles long and passes through parts of two counties and at least a couple of townships.

These facts become clear to the motorist driving over better or worse road conditions as one is crossing political boundaries in and out of various jurisdictions.

This northernmost end was worse for the wear.

Almost immediately after making my turn onto this backwoods byway, I stopped my vehicle near a guardrail and got out.

I was overlooking an incredibly large beaver pond. It was a dam that has been in existence for decades. I judged this based on the creepy look of the trees growing out of the water pooled behind the dam.

I wondered how long this beaver dam might have existed in this location. I often think of a beaver dam on Grand Island that was more than 1,000 feet long and existed for an untold amount of time.

These trees, and there were a couple hundred of them at least, were all dead and had been for many years. The water seemed stagnant, though it wasn’t. But its character presented a scene that had not changed in a long time.

I have stopped here several times over the years to take pictures. It’s not the kind of place you pass by every day. Creepy looking or not, this is a special place.

I continued driving for a handful of miles and saw other waters backed up by beaver dams or places where there had been a dam, but now it was gone, and the backwater area was now drained and dried.

Somehow the dam had failed or been blown apart by humans.

This kind of road is both thrilling and frustrating to me as there are numerous graveled side roads that look very inviting and interesting. I wonder where they all go, and I wish I could drive each one to find out – TODAY.

But I often seem to be heading to some place other than where I might want to be at a given moment. It would probably take me a month or more to experience everything I want to see just in this one relatively small area.

Small unnamed lakes, ponds and wetlands dot the map on either side of this part of the road. The largely moist character of these woods also conceals at least one waterfall and a western branch to one of the major rivers in this part of the world.

My decided course has me skirting the mouth of a tremendous gorge portions of which remind me of Montana, Wyoming or other western destinations.

In a short traveling distance, a road intersecting the one I’m traveling delineates the straight-edged border of the two counties.

In decades past, this area was home to the voices of young Civilian Conservation Corps boys, German prisoners of war and forestry students housed at a place now razed years ago and fading back into the greenery of the deepening woods.

The peak of summertime is in evidence here today with the tremendous growth of vegetation notable along the roads, trails, rivers, creeks and lakes.

With that growth comes the proliferation of hundreds of species of blooming flowers. They all appear as works of art to me hung at various heights to observe and adore.

Some I know, like sweet pea and ox-eye daisies, orange hawkweed and buttercup, but so many more I do not. The closer I get to the ground, the more I find delicate and ornate masterpieces of creation.

Growing out of a gravely soil I see an exquisite pink star-shaped flower with white and softer pink shades at its center. There are also tiny purple flowers here too. Just seeing these sparkling gems is like breathing a big fresh gulp of clear wintertime air.

So beautiful.

Nearby, I find raspberries ripe on the vine, the weight of the fruit pulling down the narrow branches.

I pick enough berries for a small handful and push them back into my mouth.

The taste is explosive with the sweet juice exciting my taste buds. This first taste of this season’s bounty is tremendous.

As I keep moving, I notice sugar plums also getting set to ripen. Off along one of the sideroads, I see a car pulled over to the shoulder and two women knelt low under some jack pine trees.

Evidently, blueberries are also ripe or ripening in some places.

Later the blackberries will ripen along with thimbleberries in there somewhere. Much later, the now little green apples hanging from the trees will also begin to blush to the delight of pie and other desert makers, as well as deer and deer hunters.

Speaking of deer, I need to slow down the vehicle quickly as a fawn skips out into the road ahead of me and begins to lope down the center of the road. It isn’t too long before it turns off into the woods to my right.

It was strange to see it alone, with no other fawns or does. Of course, that doesn’t mean they weren’t there tucked into the shadows of the thick forests alongside the road.

The fawn wasn’t the only young animal I got to see today. A young wild turkey flew out of the brush at the side of the road and landed in the center.

To avoid hitting the bird, I had to stop abruptly, sliding my camera off the back seat onto the floor. The bird didn’t linger and flew up and off the road.

I came to a set of old railroad tracks that crossed the road on a diagonal. The rails are rusted, and the grass has grown up tall in between them.

This is the kind of place I could spend days on end.

I’d lay my ear down on the track and listen to the stories the old trains had to tell me about the people and events that took place here.

I would also like to sun myself while sitting in the tall, dried grasses, listening to the clicking, buzzing and sputtering of grasshoppers.

One of the things I like about this drive is as I travel south from the north there is a decided downhill sense as the road descends from the higher elevations.

After passing the site of a previous fire lookout tower on the national forest, the road drops even farther into a wide expanse on both sides of the road. In the center of this big opening, a small stream runs through the tall, green and yellow marsh grasses.

Then the road heads back uphill for a couple of miles and then dips again one more time toward the twisting bends of another of the major river systems in this part of the country.

A beautiful waterfall is located nearby as well as a high trestle over the river. A gravel road follows the river down to a campground at the head of a steep and stepped trail that leads down to the water at a big bend in the river.

Even though I have visited this area many times in the past, I have never had the luxury of being able to stay for as long as I’d like. Therefore, in many ways, the locale maintains a sense of newness to me.

I have also been planning to cross more day trips off the lengthening list in my head. Some of these excursions I feel I need to take every summer season. Others, I’ve never taken at all and still others I haven’t walked or rode down in more than a half-century.

There is always something to discover outdoors, whether it’s someplace new, someplace familiar with new changes or new good times or someplace old that hasn’t been seen for years and has largely faded from recollection.

I spend a good amount of time scouring maps for the new and old access points to places I want to be.

Among my plans, I hope to return to this area within the next several weeks to explore before the snow flies. Yes, I said it.

The clock in my head is banging so loud telling me to get up and get outside.

I would love to be able to find another 24 hours in each day to just bum around and satisfy my yearn to walk and ramble over every bit of this rugged territory.

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.