John Pepin

“Silently, the morning mist is lying on the water, captive moonlight waiting for the dawn,” – John Denver

Slowly.

So slowly, I walk toward the edge of the quiet pond. I don’t want to disturb anything about this scene. It is magical in its intrinsic beauty and simplicity.

I fear I may have already compromised the setting in the sounds I made arriving, parking and taking the short hike through the trees to get here.

This is a place of contact and reflection as evidenced by the still waters and the soft mists that shoulder this forest oasis.

I lay my arms out flat in front of me.

I can feel the energy. It comes in waves from beneath my arms and above me. It is all around me. The air is soft and warm across my face, but much cooler at my knees, closer to the water.

I sit down on a raised, relatively dry spot on the bog mat to connect further.

I block everything out of my mind that doesn’t relate to this place, this circumstance, this moment. Closing my eyes helps.

The place is surrounded by poplar trees in the middle of a dense forest.

I arrived at a divine part of the evening – in time to watch most of the sunset and the beautiful sky painting that’s done over the western sky.

I wish life could be like this moment always. Everything feels perfect.

There are small sundews and taller pitcher plants, both carnivorous, growing out of the sphagnum moss here. The matt is itself a miniature world with so much life going on, linked like we are to water.

Some unidentified insects are dancing in the air a foot or so above the water. Over the course of a few minutes, a couple of them dip down to touch the water and then they quickly bounce back up into the air to rejoin the dance.

The action produces tiny indentations on the otherwise smooth surface of the pond.

Suddenly, the silence is shattered by the tremendous shrill and rattling – seemingly prehistoric – calls from a pair of sandhill cranes that fly into the scene and land in the woods behind the pond.

The big gray birds quickly settle into scenery and disappear into the foliage.

After a few moments pass, the reverberating calls of these modern-day Pteranodons have dissipated. The magical silence returns, belying any presence of the cranes.

But it isn’t long before I hear a twig crack underfoot off to my left and the silence is broken again.

I turn my head sharply and see a doe, standing motionless. We stare eye to eye from about 40 feet apart. I remain still myself, but I avert my gaze.

With that, she accepts my presence and turns to nibbling vegetation growing along the edge of the woods. After a few minutes, she moves off away from the pond, deeper back into the poplars.

There are dark swirls in the sky now as the burnt orange and yellow shades are being pulled down into nighttime. It shouldn’t be long now, relatively speaking.

The air remains cool here on the bog matt. I wish it was dry enough to lie back to look at the sky. Maybe, even close my eyes and rest a bit.

Instead, I stay alert as my ears are treated to the first frog song of the night.

After that male spring peeper chirps up, he is joined by an increasing chorus that will eventually reach an almost deafening level.

It appears that my moments of silence have evaporated before my ears. Once the frogs start up, that signals the cranes to start their unison mating calls from back beyond the pond.

I decided to leave, to move to another of my favorite places.

This one is just down the dirt road a few miles. It’s a place where the land is wide and stretches out before me. There are tall trees here too, but they don’t obstruct the view.

There is a deep gully, a prairie pothole-type feature where shallow water collects during some times of the year.

This place was once blackened by a tremendous wildfire, decades ago. There are stumps that remain here, blackened and dead.

The dominant cover here is knee-high grass that is yellow and green during the spring and summer but turns brown and rust red in the autumn. This place is inhabited by clay-colored sparrows, black-capped chickadees, groundhogs and more deer.

I sit down on one of the more solid stumps along the rim of the gully.

The sky has darkened enough to clearly see the planet Venus, with other stars visible above me, though still rather dim and muted by comparison.

To the west, the sky is still burning orange, red and yellow along the horizon, but the blues have darkened past purple, turning to black now – like the progression of a bruise.

When I first arrived, I was getting out of my Jeep when I heard two common nighthawks on the wing high above me, making their beeping-type calls.

As I began to find my seat, one of the birds delivered a resounding boom from its wings as it dove.

Now, however, the sounds from nature are beginning to quiet down as I sit here staring off into the panorama. It’s getting too dark to see much. This brings the stars into clearer focus, and I can begin to discern various constellations.

Almost immediately, I see the movement of a satellite tracking across the sky. I follow it for a few seconds and then ask myself why I do this every time I see one. I think it is a remnant of my childhood fascination with the night sky.

I guess like digging in the sandbox thinking we might one day hit China or scrape our hand shovels against a dinosaur bone, we stared at the night sky hoping we’d see a flying saucer or who knows what.

In those days, spotting a satellite was a big deal for us. We never got to see Sputnik or Halley’s Comet, but we’d heard of them. It was the days of men going to the moon.

I readjusted myself to be able to recline enough into the grass to look directly up at the sky. A few minutes later, I spotted another satellite. I didn’t follow this one.

I closed my eyes and way off in the distance, I heard coyotes yipping, maybe at the rising moon. They seem ready to bark at anything.

I was pleased to be able to be here for nearly an hour with no car lights appearing on the road in the darkness. I was afforded a few more moments of relative silence to let the world inside and outside me rest.

I took deep, heavy breaths of night air. I held them in for a few seconds before letting them out slowly. The nighttime is comforting somehow.

I recall so many times that on occasions like this my mind would be buzzing so loudly, I couldn’t rest at all. Always thinking, running, jumping, moving, rushing.

These days, I’m thinking but not like that. I’m more in a reflective space trying to figure out what comes next or how things go. What am I supposed to be doing?

It’s a sensation of being lost in disillusionment.

The world seems to be headed to a very dark place. I never used to think that way. Now, I feel as though I don’t have a choice. I am certain I am thinking about this in my sleep as well as all during the waking hours.

Even when I distract myself with work, hobbies or other things, I am sure there is a tape of those thoughts rolling back there in my subconscious. I think that because there is a pervasive heaviness present that persists constantly.

I am also sure that I am not the only inhabitant of this planet who is thinking or feeling this way. However, I don’t hear people talking about it much. It’s like we’re all standing silently watching the continents slip into the sea.

I pull myself up into a sitting position, and then I stand. I hold my arms out again.

I can still feel the energy moving around me. I think it’s a life force.

I open my arms back at my shoulders, extending them.

A few more deep breaths, a deep gaze into the black-blue sky above to see the stars twinkling. I’m ready now.

I dust the dirt off my bottom with my hands and walk down the dirt road in the darkness heading home.

John Pepin is the deputy public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. 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. Send correspondence to pepinj@michigan.gov or 1990 U.S. 41 South, Marquette, Mich., 49855.