“The trees bend because of the wind across that lonesome border, the trees bend because of the wind almost all the time,” – Joe Ely

It was one of those days when being out in the woods meant being careful, being aware, being concerned. With October fading fast in the rearview mirror, November had arrived with an apparent score to settle. The first few days rushed in on a blast and a scream of persistent winds and damaging gusts.

The sound alone let me understand this was nothing to be playing with. I was reminded immediately of a Lake Superior storm several years ago that cost two onlookers their lives. I was among those at the lakeshore that day, with my two stepdaughters. In just a few seconds, as we walked in the pelting sleet, the wind shredded their pull-over rain ponchos as though they were made from the flimsiest of materials.

We kept back from the water to watch the tremendous waves of more than 20 feet high, pushed up by wind gusts of at least 60 mph. What I remember most from that day was the sound. It was like the biggest and loudest machine in the world, grinding and running with something seemingly broken inside.

It was terrifying just to hear. I equated the sound with maybe a carnival ride spinning at four or five times its normal speed, like it would fall apart any second. You could sense that something terrible was happening. It felt so dangerous, like just about anything could fly through the air in the next heartbeat, like maybe a big metal crescent wrench, a boat or even the roof of a barn.

If a tree were to have fallen, we never would have heard it because the sound of the wind and the waves was roaring too loudly. The water lifted way above its usual levels, yawning its mouth open wide, revealing a deep blackness that might have gone to the center of existence. Amid the groaning, its teeth were shown, snapping and tearing, ripping.

We only stayed a couple of minutes before retreating to our safe and warm vehicle.

The lake’s waves lifted and rolled boulders and logs, they tore away docks from their shorelines and even grabbed picnic tables and other items from the yards of home and camp owners. Though the setting was different, the sound was indistinguishable today from what I heard that day. These November gales, even 20 miles from the shoreline of the big lake, were tremendous.

I felt that the way they bobbed the big and weighty branches of the white pine trees, up and down, that without doing much more than jerking just a little bit to one side or the other, these entire mammoth trees could be flung to the ground. The wind produced swirling across the surface of an inland lake I sat watching, like it was trying to stand up a water spout out on the lake. In other places, the winds pushing on the water produced dozens and dozens of miniature wavelets that ran ahead of the wind out toward deeper water.

No ducks flying today. They were likely all resting, snugly crammed into some lee backwater, waiting for the storm to blow over. As I continued to drive, the wind chased fallen leaves across the road ahead of me. Some of the leaves were tossed high into the air, while others were rolled swiftly across the blacktop off into the surrounding woods and ditches.

Rounding a corner, a dead tree had fallen onto the shoulder with its broken branches scattered across the road in front of me. I am certain there were similar trees being downed in numerous places across the region. Local power companies reported dozens of homes without electrical service after the wind had knocked branches onto power lines.

To me, it’s like November says, “OK, you’ve had your little autumn apple-cider harvest gatherings, your pumpkin-spiced lattes and corn maze quaintness, trick-or-treating and cornbread moon, now it’s my turn to show you what I’m all about.

“Let’s see if I can sink an ore carrier again, rip down some of those favorite trees your grandfather planted or 30 other kinds of chaos and mayhem. This isn’t playtime. This is November.”

The wind today not only had the sound of power and destruction, it also had the biting and slashing ability of winds usually not encountered until halfway through wintertime. Almost any jacket I would have chosen to wear today would have been penetrated by these cold and damp winds that carried on them, at varying times, sleet, rain and snow.

Animals and most birds tend to hunker down in wind like this. For some reason, gulls tend to love stormy, windy days. Numerous times, I have been out on blustery days along a lakeshore and seen the air filled with gulls floating on the winds with their wings held out straight and flat, coasting and gliding.

Though November’s winds are legendary on the Great Lakes, some of these big storms of winds and waves, with rains and snow, have occurred as one-offs in other months during the autumn. The day I described earlier on Lake Superior occurred in late October. Another blast of powerful winds I will never forget occurred on the last day of fishing season a few years ago – the last day of September.

My fishing buddy and I were out in what started out as some late afternoon winds and rain trying to get some fish. It wasn’t long before the wind picked up tremendously and grew savage. As we walked toward a bridge on an old dirt road, a tree fell across the road in front of us with a loud crash. It was the first such tree felling of countless others to follow. We tried to head our vehicle for home but kept confronting more branches and trees falling on both sides of the road.

We eventually came to a place where a tree across the road was too big for us to budge. A couple of guys in a pickup truck came by and they tried to ram and push it off the road with their truck.

Nothing doing.

We had to backtrack and divert our travel along other roads to make it out of those woods. As we headed north on the paved county road, a couple of vehicles passed us at a high rate of speed. The rain was coming down hard, leaving splashes the size of 50-cent pieces on the windshield. We watched the two cars ahead of us abruptly swerve and stop.

When we got up to them, we saw that one car had gone off the road and then swiftly back on, avoiding a massive tree that was across the road. The tree had crushed the top down on the other vehicle. I got out and approached, expecting to find the driver dead. Instead, he walked toward me from under some of the tree branches. He said he ducked down to the floor on the passenger side when he saw the tree falling.

Today, the guardrail where that accident occurred remains dented from that fallen tree. I usually look at it every time I pass by.

Even with sunny skies today, this wind has got a lot of punch and power. I had wanted to hike up the woods trail in the hardwoods, but that won’t be happening in these gusts. It kind of takes the fun out of hiking when you need to constantly be aware that branches or entire trees might fall on you at any given instant.

A better idea will be to head to a wide-open shoreline, somewhere on another inland lake. Watching the wind to see what it can do across the span of a big expanse is preferable to risking my life under those maples, birches, beeches and more.

Weather reports suggest we could get a few inches of snow this weekend. To me, it seems far too early for that, but I know it isn’t. We’ve had snow on the ground in October before that didn’t leave until almost May. With no real snow here yet this fall, there’s always something to be thankful for.

Oh, November, look kindly upon us now – give us some time and space to breathe, to live and love and just be.

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.