There is something about the wind and the air over the past few days that tells me that wintertime is lurking not too far around the corner.

It’s as though the entire atmosphere across these Great North Woods, boreal forests and far up into the Northwest Territories is being drawn into the yawning, inhaling mouth of the wild, wicked and unpredictable wintertime that is now just gathering strength up there somewhere at the top edges of the map.

The winds across our landscape have lost their warmth and comfort enough that even the bright and warmth of the autumn sunshine can’t remove the chill in the air that makes my breath catch.

In gales and swells, the winds tossed up the waters of the big lakes, making them frothy, gray and angry. The purple and dark blue-black skies also brought sharp, snapping and whipping precipitation that landed as water droplets, sleet or snow.

In any of the three forms, it delivered a sting when it blew against my cheeks. So rough and rowdy a tempestuous display, one might think it was the middle of November, with its storied gales and sunken ships of yore.

But it’s only early October.

Of course, the leaves were all in an incredible stir under these conditions, either shaking and twitching while still attached to their branches or torn loose, they were lifted high into the air by the buffeting winds.

Some rolled end to end over and over and over again across lawns, down dirt and blacktop roads and cement sidewalks. Others twirled as they fell to the ground to form colorful piles of orange, gold, red and brown leaves all mixed together.

Still other leaves spun and twirled as they fell, while some resembled helicopters or paratroopers descending from the trees and the skies above.

Overall, I sensed in the wind and the cold and damp of the day the absence of kindness and softness felt so readily in the light winds during those warm summer days already faded and growing smaller in our rearview mirrors.

With each breath I took as I walked, I felt the power the wind inhaled to the north was gathering to return at an unknown day and time to deliver powerful storms seeking to bury the countryside in lake effect snows and withering cold.

It seems the birds and other animals sense the same thing.

As the winds are inhaled to the north, the wintertime birds begin to arrive here, like the little slate-colored form of dark-eyed juncos that have appeared in flocks in recent days.

Meanwhile, sandhill cranes and groups of robins have been assembling to move south before things get too rough weatherwise. Some robins will inevitably stay though, kind of like the folks who refuse to evacuate before the hurricane arrives.

I do like this time of year.

With the fall of the leaves, many of the things obscured by walls of green leaves over the past several months will again become visible, inviting visits and investigations.

There’s still fishing to do and plenty of places to hike to and even camp before the season changes for good.

I remember as a kid these last handful of months of the year were the times I waited for endlessly. There was the excitement of the World Series, the NFL football season, the haunts and horrors of Halloween, Thanksgiving with all its tremendous feasting and then Christmastime with Santa Clause and Charlie Brown, the Grinch and all those gifts we wished for from the big department store catalogs.

Nowadays, while I still love Halloween, enjoy the fall classic and watching football games, once a glimpse of the holidays appears up ahead, the months seem to slip away in a swirl so fast a new year arrives quicker than I can pour my first cup of eggnog.

It’s like the water in a bathtub that takes a long time to drain, but once there is just a little bit left, a spinning vortex appears above the drain that accelerates and twirls the water down and out of sight in no time.

Sometimes, it feels like I am stuck in the vortex all year long with the time racing by faster and faster, like being on a merry-go-round at a sickening speed.

Even a soft, sunny summertime afternoon gives me the sensation of things moving past like as if the big, puffy cumulus clouds in those blue skies were on a time lapse video.

This, as humankind seems to be busy with its own time lapse presentation, moving up and down and here and there racing around like ants – building up, climbing higher, making new, erasing, tearing down, burning up, burning out, throwing bombs, falsehoods and insults.

Where is it all going so fast?

It doesn’t feel like it’s going someplace very good anymore.

That’s a hard thing to think about or feel.

It’s also hard to realize that there likely isn’t anybody in the entire world who can say with any real degree of certainty how things will ultimately turn out.

If I had to guess, I’d bet on us humans doing ourselves in one way or another – either accidentally or on purpose. It seems like somehow that has been understood inherently to be the final act.

Another hard thing to think about.

I file these thoughts and reveries under things I try not to think about, but they keep coming back to me no matter what I do, as though somebody or something is trying to tell me something about all this.

I keep getting the feeling that I’m not smart enough to understand the messages or I’m not seeing what I’m looking at or discerning what I’m hearing or sensing that’s right here all around me.

Maybe that grand realization comes over us just as we’re taking that last trip around the vortex before we spin down the drain?

The leaves are wet under my feet as I walk. This kind of day reminds me of walking to grade school as a young kid. The simplicity and wonder of those days seem to have flown away somewhere.

I remember being familiar with all the cracks in the sidewalks, the smells of the chimneys on cold mornings, the skies this time of year growing increasingly darker in the mornings and the afternoons and the brown and green acorns that had fallen from the trees and collected along the street curb edges.

The rain being cold and how much harder it was to get up for school on days of inclement weather. It was only seven city blocks, less than a mile, for me to walk to school, but it seemed like a big wide world that I tried to consume in earnest.

There were kid short-cuts in the walk to and from school, up and down alleys or over walls or across the front or back lawns of folks who didn’t mind.

It all became a world I learned, a world I knew and for all its smallness, it became a rich and wonderful environment to explore.

The older I got, the farther afield I wandered, and my world got bigger.

Now I’ve become old enough that my world seems to include the entire world, with everything connected in one way or another.

It seems too big for someone who still has a lot of that same little kid here inside me. Too complicated, too fast and too much going on everywhere all at once all the time.

But the fact that a walk outside today can still conjure up feelings and thoughts of those schoolboy days walking to school – like they were still happening right now before my eyes, leaves me feeling warm inside.

It also makes me think that somehow, there might be so much more happening with me and with all of us that we don’t understand that maybe everything will be alright somehow after all.

I stop to pick up a wet, red maple leaf and smell its sweet aroma. I close my eyes and take a few more whiffs. I feel the chilled air in my lungs and the rain on my face.

It may be chilly outside, with so much more to come in the days ahead but for right now, in this minute, my heart feels warm and so do I.

I put my hands in my coat pockets and keep walking.

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

Forward.

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.