“And so it goes, but where it’s going, no one knows,” – Nick Lowe

It was earlier than usual when I found my way to this secluded and serene pocket within these remote northern backwoods. I sat on a log, looking and probably feeling like a bird that had just slammed itself, face first, into a picture window. I was dazed, exhausted and my brain was foggy. I had been needing greatly to get away to the forest primeval, away from the news and the noise and the grating and grinding sounds of “civilization.”

A profound stillness had settled on the lake. The water body seemed to still be asleep, hypnotized by the haunts of nighttime and the mists of the ethereal. Its reflective surface was perfectly flat with fuzzy yellow lines of pollen creating undulating patterns across the water like rivers on a map. The sun was on the rise, but it hadn’t crested the surrounding hills, which themselves still lay sleeping in shadowy, gray and faint outlines across the way. The scene was, at once, silent, peaceful and rapidly engaging.

My consciousness was scanning everything around me for stimuli to react to and absorb. In my head, the sound was a screeching, creaking noise, like a rusty railway train rounding a bend on a downhill grade. My mind kept rolling around a line from Shakespeare: “It’s a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

I recognized this as the latest in an ever-lengthening line of existential wonderings I’ve crafted over passing days, weeks and months.

What am I doing?

What are you doing?

What are they doing?

What are we all doing?

Dammit.

What am I not doing?

What are we all not doing?

Dammit.

A pair of goldeneyes slowly glided out from behind a reed hedge near the shoreline and cut a tear across the mercury-like water with their courtly promenade. Silently, the king and queen kicked along with an air of grandeur undoubtedly presented for their lowly subjects – like me. The wanderings of my mind did randomly produce one helpful conclusion.

I have finally determined how much wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. The answer is precisely “about a cord and a half, give or take.” I’m glad that’s finally settled. Now I can get on to more pressing concerns like exploring what I would do for a Klondike Bar or determining how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.

It surprised me to learn that scientists and others have studied that second question in laboratory settings – even at the University of Michigan. Given their cumulative varied results, the Tootsie Pop Owl’s question of how many licks essentially remains unanswered and may indeed be eternal. Meanwhile, back here on Earth…

The temperature was still in the mid-40s, but I couldn’t tell. The numbness I was feeling extended to my ability to sense much warmth or cold. Suddenly, an American bittern flew up unexpectedly to perch at the top of a tree. It craned its neck, stretching it out for a periscopic looksee. Within a few seconds, it clumsily flew back down and disappeared into the tanned and dried cattails of the swamp that hugged the rim of the lake.

There were deer tracks I’d seen in the sand on the dirt road, but no sign of the animals here at the water’s edge. Tree branches were clearly marked with the bark-stripping and chewing of beavers. There were also paw prints from muskrats in the black mud at the waterline. In the sky above me, an adult bald eagle – with its characteristic adult white head plumage and tailfeathers — glided without a sound from one end of the scene to the other.

Instead of allowing my brain to keep working like a popcorn popper coming up with more and more seemingly errant and stupid thoughts, I tried to stop thinking altogether. I stood up and began walking over the short distance to the edge of the water. I bent down to submerge my hand. The water felt icy cold. It sent a shiver through me.

And with that, the numbness was gone. As the sunlight filtered through the budding maples and birches along the road, activity started picking up. A raft of common mergansers, mixed males and females, took a paddling tour around a small peninsula here that reached out into the lake. These divers were on the hunt for fish, crustaceans or similar food items.

A mallard pair splattered down on the water sending rolls of wave energy ruffling across the lake. Birdsong from the surrounding woodlands, marshes and overhead began to noticeably increase as the sun gained more prominence above. Hello ovenbird, white-throated sparrow, eastern phoebe and yellow-bellied sapsucker.

Good morning.

I stood up and stretched. My mind seemed to be clearing, and I was able to use it to consider the day ahead and where I had to be, what I had to do – deadlines and commitments. However, No. 1 on that list was to be right here where I was.

I walked back up to the road, where I was met by a cloud of black flies dancing in the air. They swarmed around my head, and I turned away.

As I headed up the dirt road, the dark cloud dissipated.

Off to my left, I noticed an animal trail I knew of that is shared by moose and deer and probably a host of other creatures. No one on it today, but the grass had been freshly trampled.

When I got to a place where there used to be a small pond, I was surprised to see there was water in the muddy depression. A blocked culvert had at one time turned this place into a painted turtle haven and a nesting location for mallards.

But when the culvert was repaired a few years ago, the pond drained down to not much more than a trickle. I suppose it must be the winter’s runoff responsible for the water pooled here now.

Farther up the road, I reached a tiered series of beaver dams that have been there for decades. I could tell this by the weathered and worn condition of the wood and the thick green mosses that covered the sticks and other materials creating the dam. The buds had met that crucial time in the warming spring where they, in their lime greens and Spanish peanut reds, sit waiting to pop open into fresh, new leaves.

When a notable amount of rain arrives, it seems like they explode into growth overnight. Rain is in the forecast over the next couple of days. At the sizeable beaver pond, I see more mallards and goldeneyes swimming around, seemingly without care. Canada geese are here too. A goose and a gander stroll along the edge of the road walking toward me.

I take this to mean there is a nest or young goslings nearby.

I turn around by the old gate and start to head back to my Jeep.

Not only is the sun now much higher in the sky, the temperature has also climbed accordingly, enough for me to know I’ll be taking my jacket off as soon as I get back to the vehicle. The lake still sits flat and reflective. I see more mergansers and a few buffleheads out swimming on this beautiful morning.

I look for loons, but don’t see any. Except, of course, for me.

I do wonder increasingly about where we are all going to end up with so many concurrent threats to public lands, public access, threatened and endangered species, national parks, forests, grasslands and wildlife refuges, clean air and water, sensitive natural areas and so much more.

The more I am concerned and think, the harder it gets to just go through a normal day of doing mundane tasks like grocery shopping, mowing the lawn or taking out the trash. But I remain unafraid. The only way ahead is forward – come hell or high water. Maybe people everywhere will come together before we come apart. Where the dirt road meets the pavement, I stop to yield for other cars coming toward me on the corner. They whip around the curve like their drivers are late for something important.

I wonder what they are late for.

What am I late for?

What are you late for?

What are we all late for?

Dammit.

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.