“I’m still carrying the gift you gave; it’s a part of me now, it’s been cherished and saved; It’ll be with me unto the grave and then unto eternity,” – Bob Dylan

On a rainy and chilly afternoon, I parked my Jeep in an old sandy turnaround at the side of the two-track dirt road.

I walked around to the back of the vehicle and reached for my fishing pole and a small camera before closing the tailgate. Within a couple of minutes, I was walking into a late summer scene on a road that had been almost entirely reclaimed by the surrounding woodlands. It was summer’s waist-high, green bracken ferns turning brown, yellowing grasses and jack pines growing here and there along the flat top of a steep ridge.

If I hadn’t vaguely remembered this place from being here when I was a young kid, I likely wouldn’t have seen it. I probably would have driven past.

This was one of what I refer to as “ground truthing” trips.

These are excursions into discovering nature where I am either visiting places for the first time after learning about them from studying maps or books or returning to places I have committed to memory after activities that occurred months, years or decades ago. Today’s journey would be a return to a place I had been with my dad in one of my earliest memories of experiencing a fishing outing with him.

The recollections I have from that day are patchy and cloudy, like a sputtering reel of old cinema film that has been scratched and chipped but still provides water-spotted and soft-focused images. I recall sitting on the front passenger seat in my dad’s old blue “bomb,” which was a 1950’s Pontiac. I was very young.

We were going to fish for trout that lived within the banks of this medium-sized river I was only just coming to know.

Back then, I never could have imagined how much I would grow to love this river. It would become one of my greatest companions in life in times good and bad.

I remember the big, curly nightcrawlers we had in some fresh, black dirt from the garden. We were keeping them in a silver, crescent-shaped aluminum worm box that had a dozen or so holes poked into the lid for air. My dad ran his belt through two metal, rectangular loops in the back of the can to attach the container to his hip.

My dad was wearing rubber hip waders. He had a woven basket-like creel with a shoulder strap to put fish in, and he carried small boxes in his pockets that contained lead split-shot sinkers and No. 6 hooks. His fishing rod was creamy-white colored, with the eyelets of the guides secured with red, black and yellow string. I don’t recall him wearing a fishing jacket, but he often wore check-pattered long-sleeved shirts and farmer-green pants. His reel was an old-time bait-caster with thick black woven line. I had a plastic fishing pole made for kids, not a fancy one like my dad’s.

It was early in the morning when the old bomb chugged down the dirt two-track and turned right. We drove back to the top of the steep ridge overlooking the river and parked. There was a narrow path that led from where we’d parked the car to the edge of the water below. The river here flowed certain and determined, but neither fast nor especially wild. My dad shut the car off and we sat waiting. The windshield was dotting with spots of rain, and the skies were darkening. In just a few moments, it was almost dark like night.

A clap of thunder boomed like a cannon, jarring my consciousness. A bright zigzagging lightning bolt followed soon afterward that lit up the entire sky. I could see tall white pines along the far side of the black waters of the river.

The branches were swaying in the winds and raindrops pelted the surface of the water. The sky then went dark again. A moose tooth swung from the rear-view mirror, hung by a small bronze-colored bead chain with a clasp. Dad said we would wait a few more minutes to see if the rain would stop. My dad had started up the car and turned the heater on. The warmth brought comfort and familiarity to me. I sank deeper into my seat.

Fishing in the rain is one thing I never mind. In fact, some of the best catches I’ve had have come during those times when the falling rain has dappled the surface of the creek or stream that I’m fishing. However, once the lightning and thunder start, I put down the fishing rod and find shelter until the storm passes. I never want the rod I am casting to help make me an attractive place for lightning to strike. It seemed like we waited quite a long time before he told me that the rain didn’t look like it was going to stop. At one point, the sky did get a lot lighter which made me think we were going to start fishing soon but then it got dark again.

We headed home saying we’d try it again some other time. As far as I recall, we never did. It’s odd. This outing is one of my most beloved fishing trip memories and we never even got out of the car. So, it seems right that today, as I return to this same place among the jack pines to ground-truth my memories, it’s raining. From my map reading, I had determined that a lot of the land along the river had been purchased over the years and was no longer open to the public.

However, this place I was walking toward was still accessible as state land. The jack pine trees were still here, but their branches were now characteristically gnarled, twisted and gray. Some of the white pines I could see in the distance across the river were also aged and bent. A couple had crashed to the ground already, years ago. I looked for the narrow trail down to the river. It was gone. The bank was steeper than I’d remembered. It was composed of gray-colored sand.

I took one step and the sand around my boot came to life with the movements of dozens of black ants. I moved a few feet away and sat down in a clump of reindeer moss to take a picture of the river. The shot I could get from here provided an upstream perspective. The nature of the river’s flow remained the way I’d remembered it from way back then – constant and persistent, but without rapids or waterfalls.

I looked for a place to descend to the river that looked like a safe way to go without slipping and falling. I ultimately gave up on the sandy embankment, instead favoring a brushy slope where the trail used to be. I trudged through the thick underbrush with branches slapping back against me. It didn’t appear anyone had been here for years. At this point, I was still about 50 or 60 feet from the water’s edge.

There appeared to be a small clearing behind a couple of birch trees to my left, though walking over to them would take me away from the river. I went that way and pushed past some chest-high bushes, ducking to avoid some thornapple branches. Then the vegetation parted. I was surprised to find a grassy area where the topography sloped to a flat landing at a wide turn in the river’s direction. The corner was covered in ancient black and gray lichen-covered rocks.

Though none of the hiking I’d done to get down to this place seemed familiar to me, the realization that I knew this bend in the river shot through me like a flaming arrow. Before I realized what was happening, I’d fallen to my knees. Time seemed to stop dead. I felt myself holding my breath. When I pushed my hair back away from my eyes, tears fell into the black water flowing past the place where I knelt. I began to shake as I pulled myself into a sitting position. The tears turned to uncontrollable sobs. I sat shaking violently, holding my arms around myself.

I was overcome now assured that this place I’d seen and couldn’t place from countless shadowy dreams and vague recollections truly did exist. The recollection of some facts and the forgetting of others left me dumbfounded. My reverence for this occasion was silent and complete. I remained still to listen to the water for several minutes. I didn’t whisper a word. I remained seated or kneeling, humbled by this majestic place in my little world.

In leaving, I waded into the water and walked upstream. At the base of the sandy slope, I stopped to take several casts. I caught a couple of small brook trout, which I released back into the water. Within the next half hour, I would find myself in my Jeep heading back up the muddy two-track road, a light and misting rain falling.

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.