John Pepin

“One more cup of coffee before I go to the valley below,” – Bob Dylan

By this time, in late February, the winter’s falling snow dancing on the wind before landing on every available surface, has lost its charm.

In these days, especially those when the snow continues to pile up, I feel like I’m suffocating. Inside the house, I’m claustrophobic. Outside, I’m sinking.

It’s not that I don’t like winter. I love winter.

Let’s just say that by now, it’s more likely I find my mind rambling over green summertime landscapes I’ve known, the beauty and brightness of spring wildflowers or the life-affirming sounds of flowing water.

There’s one place my mind often tends to hover over for its simpler times, spark of exploration, discovery and my imprinting – like a salmonoid – on the site when I was very young.

It’s a setting where a river swirls around a big, lazy corner, passing a place where an old farmstead once stood. There’s a high hill there, a deep river valley and a treasure trove of connections for me.

An old two-lane county road bisects the scene into upstream and downstream sections marked most prominently, back in those olden days, by a metal railed bridge, with wooden deck planks that made a rumbling noise when a car passed over it.

I have always had a fascination with creeks and rivers, since my earliest days visiting places to fish in the area’s forests with my mom and dad.

Seeing my dad pull a beautiful “speckled” trout from the black, foam-topped waters of a pool beneath a waterfall may still be the greatest magic trick I have ever experienced.

I was 3 or 4 years old then. I remember everything about it – the rusty pine needles covering the ground, the tag alders standing along the river, the smell of the trout in my dad’s hands as he let me touch it and see it up close.

The wind whooshed through the trees in a peaceful way, while the sound of the waterfall gushed constantly in the background.

What struck me most was the absolute wildness of this fish. It had black eyes that seemed to stare right into me. Its mouth also had a blackness to it, and it was hooked into a stern expression.

Against a green background of the fish’s overall coloring, there were irregularly shaped yellow dots and lines I would later learn helped to camouflage the fish from predators – like me and my folks.

The biggest things I remember about this trout – the first I had ever seen – were its white-tipped orange fins and especially the round red speckles along its sides, set against larger, light blue dots that together created a shape that looked like miniature fried eggs – if fried eggs had blue whites and red yokes.

This event certainly was a flashpoint for me, one that struck me squarely on the top of my head – like a lightning bolt.

I immediately wanted to know how to catch a fish. Fortunately for me, I had a mom and dad who wanted to teach me as much as I wanted to learn.

In those days, my folks were predominantly live bait casters, using nightcrawlers or red worms they kept in aluminum bait cans.

My dad had also used grasshoppers and gold- and silver-bladed French spinners he’d cast at German brown trout.

One recurring story my dad told was how he and my mom had stopped at the old bridge here to look up and down the river – a trait that became firmly seated in me and pertained to pretty much all back woods bridges.

Leaning on the old green bridge rail, my dad spotted a group of fish facing upstream into the rapids. He cast a spinner from the bridge and caught a limit catch of brown trout in just a few minutes.

In those days, the river was filled with brown, brook and rainbow trout. There were also suckers and chubs.

All those fish liked to eat worms. So, I would sometimes get to go out to the backyard with my dad in the dark to pick nightcrawlers.

My job was to hold the coffee can while my dad shone a flashlight on the ground, looking for worms. He would walk slowly and then he’d bend down quickly to try to grab the nightcrawlers before they pulled themselves back into their holes – shying away from the light.

The picking was particularly productive on rainy nights when the worms would come out of their holes to keep from drowning.

Upstream from the old bridge, there was a wide pool where the river deepened and a big pine tree – wider than all our arms could fit around – leaned, slanted over the water.

One day, decades later, it would fall into the water with a mighty crash, its crown smashing down against the opposite shore.

We would cast lines into the pool and prop our fishing rods up with Y-shaped sticks pushed into the soft dirt that my dad called “crutches.”

While we’d wait for bites, we’d sit and talk and enjoy the pleasant evening. Unless he was on the big lake, my dad was almost always an after-supper fisherman.

Years after these earliest times, my brother and I rode our bikes out to the bridge and beyond with a friend of ours from down the street.

The weather turned on us, and it began to snow. We had a few fish that, like us, were frozen when we finally got back home.

In my high school years, when I had a car and could travel farther more easily, I would spend a lot of time fishing. I’d drive out to this place and park at the top of the big hill, where an old cabin stood just off the side of the road. It has since all but collapsed.

From there, I’d walk down a power line to where a small creek fed into the river. Just upstream from this confluence, there was a beaver dam backing up the waters of the creek.

I used to walk out onto the dam and cast my worms up into the pool, often catching nice-sized brook trout in the 10-12-inch range. When I was done fishing at the dam, I’d fish the river down to the bridge and then walk the road back up the hill to my car.

One time that sticks out in my memory was while I was wading in the river, I saw a fish jump, probably about 60 feet in front of me.

I leaned to cast a spinner without snagging the lure on a branch overhanging the water. It landed right where the fish had left a reverberating ring on the water surface.

With only half a turn on my reel to retrieve the line, the fish hit hard.

It was a big yellow, brown trout that I landed and then slipped into my creel.

Another time I remember, I walked across the road after parking near the cabin at the power line. This time, I walked through a patch of wild blueberries, stopping to eat a few handfuls.

From there, I descended a steep hillside in front of me to the river. There, I waded through new waters for me, casting into deep holes and walking over shallow, rocky areas where the yellow and green river grasses stretched long in late summer.

Eventually, I turned around and walked back up the river to the bridge and again ascended the hill on the road to get back to my vehicle.

All those old times have faded and changed, except in my head. As much as I can recall, I wonder how much I have forgotten.

As I watch the snow falling now on another wintry day, with temperatures sunk to below 10 degrees, I remind myself that in only three weeks or so, the spring robins will be back singing, snow or no snow.

I make a pledge to myself that I will return to that river, the deep valley, updated bridge and the hillside blueberries this summer to bring my dad, mom and sister back to those places, if only in my mind.

Maybe my brother will be here sometime during the fishing season. He and I could go there then together. I expect he remembers that snowy day bike ride out there, when my hands felt so cold, I thought they were going to fall off.

Not having been there in a long time, I am not sure what I might find there now. That’s just one more reason to go. The searching, exploration, curiosity and discovery never seem to quit for me.

Give me an old, two-track dirt road, a fishing pole and a creek or a stream. I could be happy there until the next wintertime rolled around – maybe even forever.

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.