Backwoods road is a favorite place to travel

By John Pepin

Michigan DNR

ESCANABA — “Take me back down where cool water flow, ya’ll, let me remember the things I love,” – John Fogerty

Turning off the big highway onto the white-graveled road, my heart lifts off the bottom of my chest. Not only was I trading tourist traffic and pavement for a backwoods byway this road was one of my favorites to travel.

I try to get out to this road at least once a summer, but I don’t always make it.

I’ve struggled for many years to pinpoint exactly what makes this area so special. It’s hard to capture, but I can start by saying there’s a different “feeling” to the area that I don’t really experience in other places.

It’s like a wide-open plain in a lot of places, with burnt stumps and tall grasses, but it’s also a lot of dense growth of aspen trees.

In some places on the plains, you can sit on a rise and see a great distance across the landscape. In the distance, there is a wide river that snakes its way back and forth through big bends and flat straight stretches.

There used to be a two-track road here somewhere that cut through the grasses to the river but that was so long ago now it may no longer exist. I have often tried to find it but never have been able to – at least so far.

When we were kids, my dad used to drive us out here and park under the shade of some of the aspen trees. We’d picnic in the tall grass or stop for a few minutes to look at the river.

In my memory, those were always warm summer days with warm winds moving their way through the green and wavy grasses with a whisper.

I wore a buzz-type haircut in those kid days, with short bangs to be combed back. It was a style called a “Princeton” – which was very common in those times.

An Internet search reveals that it was also called an “Ivy League” haircut or a “Harvard Clip.” It became popular in the 1950s and is considered “a classic and timeless style of men’s haircut that has been popular for decades.”

When my dad would drive our family through the community of Princeton near Gwinn, my brother and I would always duck down to the backseat floor so we wouldn’t get a “Princeton” haircut while passing through town.

In summer, we also wore shorts, white socks and tennis shoes, along with some kind of pullover shirt that was often color striped.

It was a versatile outfit that could allowably get us into a church service on a Sunday morning, a restaurant on a Sunday afternoon and the back seat of our car for a woods ride into Sunday evening.

It could also be worn fashionably for playing with “Hot Wheels” and “Matchbox” cars or shuffling through football and baseball cards or lying on the living room floor or davenport watching cartoons on television.

I guess my appearance hasn’t changed all that much over the decades. I noticed today that I am wearing shorts, flip-flops and a dark, long-sleeved black T-shirt. No “Princeton” today, but I’d consider it.

My hair is much longer, pushed back on the sides and over the top, past my collar in the back – closer to my teenaged hairstyle.

There is something light and airy about this landscape that sets it apart, almost desert-like. The sky is blue, and the air is warm. The gravel color of the road reminds me of desert sands, dirt and rocks.

The bushes here are reminiscent of the desert scrub vegetation that I knew from my years out west in California.

I continue my drive but stop at a handful of watery places to have a look.

One is a small creek that is so grown over I need to get out of the Jeep to see it. The second is a wetland pond that is uncharacteristically full of water, with beautiful white waterlilies blooming all along its edge.

The third is a creek at a place where there used to be an old sawmill, long gone by the time I first visited as a kid. Today the creek water is very low and choked with stream vegetation, including long and flowing green and yellow grasses.

I tossed my fishing line into the culvert and my lure snagged between a couple of rocks. I had to walk through the water in the culvert to retrieve my line. On the other side, a couple of casts yielded quick bites, but no trout hitting hard enough to be caught.

The plant, bush and tree growth along the sides of this road makes it difficult to recognize landmarks. There are several sections that no longer seem familiar.

I use my memory as a map and make turns this way and that, hoping the right connections are being made. I watch the turns in the road and the features along its sides, hoping to find reminders to confirm I’ve made the right choices.

At one point, the road gets quite narrow, and I begin to doubt myself. I stop the Jeep where there are raspberry bushes, heaping with ripe berries along both sides of the vehicle. The bushes are close enough to scratch the Jeep.

Fruits of the forest, the first taste of this season’s bounty – exquisitely delicious and wild. Yum. I see there will be plenty of blackberries and thimbleberries ripe in the coming weeks. Blueberries are ripe now too, but I don’t see any on my travels today.

I arrive at an old beaver pond. This place has been home to beavers for decades. Consequently, the dirt road at this place is often either submerged, deeply rutted and muddy or washed out.

Today, someone dumped a truck full of boulders, each about twice the size of my fist, to fill in a washed-out section of the road. Driving over the rocks feels like off-roading with the rocks scraping against each other as the Jeep jerks ahead slowly.

Seeing this place confirms I have indeed made the right decision on which turn to take to get me where I want to be, which is on a wider and more familiar dirt road that curves yonder and nod along the course of a different river.

Before I get there, I stop at a small rise in the road that I recognize from past visits as a breeding home to clay-colored sparrows. They build their nests – formed with grass and animal hair – close to the ground in the dense vegetation.

The birds usually lay about a half-dozen eggs.

They are vocal birds that sound cheerful, but today I don’t hear a single note. I then realized the late date on the calendar. The birds would not likely be on a nesting territory singing or calling as the breeding season is already passed.

Down the road a bit, I do see a small flock of sparrow-like birds, grayish brown in color, flitting around in the low bushes. I stop the Jeep and catch one of them in view with my binoculars.

It is a clay-colored sparrow. Perhaps the group was composed entirely of these birds that might have dispersed from the nesting territory. These birds do sometimes raise two broods in a single summer.

As the afternoon wears on, the temperature begins to soar into the 80s with high humidity. By the time I hit the highway again, I have the air conditioning on in my Jeep.

The day was resplendent, with some fond memories, places to visit both familiar and not so familiar, sweet berries to sample, rivers and creeks to listen to and wade in and the staggering beauty of trees and roadside flowers surrounding me everywhere.

This is a day I know I will return to, in my mind’s remembrances, during the depths and darkness of wintertime. I will float on the warmth and the airy feeling I can regenerate by merely recalling the names of the roads and their landmarks.

Who knows how many more of these days there will be?

It’s best to get out to enjoy every single one that we can.

Over a highway bridge, I cross the big river and shift back into the eastern time zone.

Something about making that simple transition always seems other worldly to me.

I take a sip from an ice-cold pop I’ve got sitting in the cupholder. I roll up a big hill and down a straight stretch on the other side. It won’t be too long, and I’ll be close to home again.

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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.