“Looking at the rain, feeling the pain of love lost running through my brain.”

– Gordon Lightfoot

I sat in the house in the big chair in the living room.

Furniture manufacturers and salespeople call it a “cuddler,” because of its spacious ability to seat two people close together.

It’s the same chair that I have called “the crippler” after falling asleep on it in an awkward position.

I heard a sound that was familiar, yet I couldn’t quite make out what it was at first.

I went to the front door and opened it.

The nighttime air was warm and full of gusting winds. The sound I had been hearing was rain falling on the roof.

Probably because of the snowpack on the roof, the rain in the wintertime sounds different than the summertime kind.

I was struck by the odd occurrence of all-night rain showers in February.

This certainly isn’t the normal way the weather works in this part of the world. February is supposed to duke it out with January for the coldest month of the year.

The rain, along with four preceding days of temperatures above 40 degrees, had worked with the winds to diminish the height of snowbanks and ground cover everywhere it fell.

My hope was that if these showers dropped some of the snowpack now, the impact of spring runoff would be minimized enough to allow for good conditions for the opening day of inland trout fishing season on the last Saturday of April.

But for those of us who want plenty of snow for fun, wintertime activities, the rain and warmth has been a significant disappointment.

Like a lot of people, I’ve wondered if this was a one-off or whether this is a sign of things to come.

I read a recent article that while China had its lowest temperature on record in January, 11 European countries recorded all-time highs.

The article, published in Yale’s “Climate Connections” said, “The contiguous U.S. experienced its sixth-warmest January, with seven northeastern states notching their warmest January on record, and 19 other states recording a top-ten warmest January.

“Seven states recorded a top-ten wettest January on record: Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. With the first measurable snow of the winter not occurring until Feb. 1, New York City had its longest snowless streak since records began in 1869.”

In Michigan, the trend continued.

“January 2023 will go down in the record books as one of the warmest for all Michigan cities. Most cities had anywhere between the third-warmest and seventh-warmest January on record,” according to an Mlive article. “Using the average temperature for the month, most Michigan cities were between seven degrees and eight-and-a-half degrees warmer than average. Record warmest months are usually around 10 degrees warmer than average.”

Marquette was 7 degrees above normal for the month, and despite logging 24 days remaining below freezing, the city saw its third-warmest January.

I watched some interesting things happening during these warm weather events.

The south-facing, sunny side of our house, warmed by increasing daylight hours in the sunshine, had produced a crop of cluster flies that likely came out of their hiding places too early for springtime.

Overnight temperatures dropping below freezing killed off large numbers of the bugs. The following morning, white-breasted nuthatches took turns diving down to the base of the back wall of the house to collect the dead flies.

They would pick them up in their bills and then fly up to the branches of maple trees, where they delicately inserted the dead flies into crevices in the bark.

The next day, when the sun and the flies were out again, the nuthatches were feeding on pecan suet cakes at our feeding station. They apparently knew how the temperature cycle worked and they would be able to visit the dead bug diner for another smorgasbord in the early cold of the next morning.

Another interesting thing I witnessed involved our resident flying squirrel population.

We have two suet cages on the trunk of a maple tree in our front yard. After some heavy snowfalls dumped more than a foot of snow atop what we had already piled up, I stopped filling those feeders for several weeks.

Our main feeding station is around the other side of the house where the flying squirrels don’t go, likely because there are no trees nearby for them to fly to and cling to.

So, after many weeks of no food in the feeders, I filled them again after the rains and warm temperatures brought down the height of the snowpack.

The first night, I took my flashlight and went outside after dark but didn’t see any flying squirrels at the feeders. The second night, they were there and have been every night since.

I wonder how they knew the feeders had been filled. Was it by perhaps smelling the suet cakes? It’s a strange trick they perform, and I don’t know how they do it.

The weather brought big sections of snow and ice sliding down from our metal roof, crashing to the ground below in another rare occurrence to see during February – groundhog or no groundhog, shadow or no shadow.

In a lot of cases, the ice over the creeks and streams seems largely intact, with some openings allowing me to hear the bubbling, churning, gurgling or rushing of the waters.

I love to hear that sound at any time of the year.

I hear there’s still plenty of ice for ice fishing. The morning after the rain, several inland lakes were covered in large puddles of standing water that engulfed ice-fishing shacks, some of which had collapsed after being undermined by the melting snow.

How about that shooting down of an object over Lake Huron after it flew over parts of the Upper Peninsula? Wow.

With the descriptions of the objects provided by the government of various geometric shapes with string hanging down, I wonder if one of my box kites that blew out of my control as a kid was still floating around up there somewhere.

If it was, I’m sorry.

I didn’t mean to cause any national concern, much less require the U.S. government to fire two missiles at it to knock it to the bottom of Lake Huron.

Everything seems so strange in these times.

I think it started with the pandemic, but it has gotten stranger since.

Who can say what will happen next and be right?

I don’t think anyone knows.

I can see the attraction to stealing away to the woods somewhere for good.

Heading to the simplicity of the wilds and wonders of nature seems like a reasonable and rewarding idea to me.

Some people say we are put here to learn.

If that’s true, I can see myself learning a great deal more out there at the feet of the redwoods or the ageless bristlecone pines – walking the desert or climbing the mountains.

The forest creatures have stories to show and tell and even the rocks have taken great journeys to become the rugged figures they are today. Those tales of sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks date back beyond almost anything.

I imagine a life existing, where focusing on the lessons, contemplations and satisfactions of nature are mine to enjoy without the distractions to my mind, spirit and soul of the commonplace, the inane and the criminal.

That existence does not exist within the confines of a city or a busy marketplace, a football game or even a friendly game of cribbage.

Lower the drawbridge, we’ve got one more coming across. One more knight headed into the forest to lay down his arms and pick up his honor.

Even if I were to perish there within a week’s time, I think it would be worth the price -time well spent. In that tiny window of experience, there would likely be things available to me to experience that I have never known.

Hear the heavy chains hit lax against the big wooden drawbridge now closed and back up in position. Some would say, “He’s gone over,” referring to a loss of faculties or sanity.

And I, smiling as I walk toward the rising sun through a golden meadow teeming with flopping and flipping and flying grasshoppers, would strongly contest that assertion.

However, to do so, I would have to return to this fractious forum to debate. I would also have to care what others had said about me.

And in my glee among the wilds, I would not.

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.