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Let’s go down to the waterline. C’mon.” – Mark Knopfler

I remember clearly there was a dirt slope leading down to the edge of the lake from the grassy grounds where the tents were situated. I don’t recall how old I was, but I know I was young – maybe elementary school. I was at scout camp for the first time. Scouting would be another experience I would have that acquainted me with the outdoors, which I was constantly looking for new opportunities to enjoy.

Before breakfast, I headed down that dirt slope to the water line and baited a hook with a worm. I attached a bobber to the line and casted it out toward a raft of lily pads offshore. In only a few seconds, the bobber was pulled under the water, and I could see it zigzagging into the depths of the lake out of sight. I pulled up quickly and felt the line tug back strong.

I reeled in and landed what I believe to be my first-ever bluegill. I didn’t expect such a little fish to fight so hard. It was beautiful to see up close in my hand. I let it go back into the water.

We had a full day of activities scheduled but I would have been happy to skip breakfast and stay here with my bobber and my bluegill fishing. It was so much fun. I didn’t want to quit. I think I caught some yellow perch too, but I had caught those before, and they were nowhere near the fighters of the bluegills.

In my memory, the lily pads and the grasses growing up near the shore were a brilliant spring green. The lake was small with a trail around its rim.

The water was still and beautifully reflective. The bottom of the lake was not sandy nor graveled; it was mucky. The clean smell of the water still lingers in my brain.

I remember we had old military-style mess kits we carried that were made of tin or aluminum. The handle that held the kit together with a wing nut and screw could be attached to one side of the kit to make a frying pan. There was also a dish to eat from.

We cooked not dogs and beans over a campfire and sat around the fire at nighttime telling stories and jokes. One night, some of the older scouts convinced us cubs we should go on a snipe hunt through the woods in the dark. We headed out into the trees across the field with our flashlights and paper grocery bags. I discovered later that there was no snipe to hunt, and the whole idea was a long-running joke played on the young and unassuming first timers, like me.

Looking back, there were already social cliques that had formed at that young age. I didn’t have a real place within any of them, which would be a familiar theme by the time I reached high school. I was less into athletics and tended more toward naturalist pursuits, music, reading, learning, history and art – all strong interests for me to this day. I did not return to scout camp.

I spent a week at church camp one summer with similar results. I think I had more fun there but still didn’t really fit in that much. We had campfires there too. No snipe hunts. We sang around the fire, prayed and swam in the warm waters of the lake. No fishing. One day at church camp, sitting on the beach on a sunny afternoon, I saw something blazing across the sky. I don’t know if anyone else saw it. It only appeared for three or four seconds, and it was gone. If I had to make a best guess as to what it was, I would say a meteor. It looked like a fireball rolling and tumbling over the lake, appearing out of the clouds and then disappearing just as quickly. I’ve never really been able to understand what it was for certain.

I think my best scouting memories involved my mom helping me earn my proficiency pins in various subjects, and a jack pine planting effort south of town for a Save Our American Resources campaign project. I was among those scouts who ducked away for a few minutes to run down the road to the bridge over the creek to look for fish, frogs and snakes.

At school, I mostly liked the teachers, especially the science instructors, and would talk with them or write reports about things I had done with my family outdoors. Those are the kinds of things that earned me nicknames from classmates like “Bird Boy.” This for me would mark a further divergence from the so-called “in-crowd,” happy in my introverted world of nature and the like. I used to have my scouting pins and badges in a box that I kept in my dresser drawer as keepsakes, but I have since misplaced them, unless my mom has them.

The other kinds of things I have kept include my dad’s old pocketknife, very old woodworking and plumbing tools and some of his fishing tackle, like his old bait caster reel that has an engraved fishing scene on the side of it. Since my dad died, I still have kept a bunch of his wallet items. I can’t really imagine ever throwing them out. I am getting old enough now that when I look back at pictures of myself as a kid, it seems like it was so long ago I wonder if it really could have been me in those photos and 8mm films. But then, at the same time, in some sense, it doesn’t really seem that far back.

The time just flew by. Things I did that seem relatively recent turn out, after further inspection, to be 20 or 30 years ago. I have read a lot over the past few years about how kids and parents too have lost a lot of connection to the natural world, the outdoors and nature. I really hope that’s not true. I prefer to think that maybe they just temporarily misplaced it. I can’t imagine how empty my life would have been if I didn’t have nature and the outdoors to envelope myself in.

I do think it is likely one of the toughest times ever to grow up in America for kids. The pressures they deal with today, made exponentially more difficult with smartphones and social media, make my youth and adolescence seem quaint – even though the times I grew up in were marred with war, assassinations, riots, crooked politicians and deep societal divisions. Hey, wait a minute, maybe things haven’t changed that much after all.

Instead of cellphones, I remember when a pocket calculator was a new, big invention. The thought of children somehow without nature in their lives as a primary component saddens me deeply. It makes me again realize how fortunate I have been to grow up with dirt underneath my fingernails, close to the earth and the woods and the water. That kept me happy and smiling for most of my young life.

I also had parents who were drawn to nature themselves. That was another lucky card I got in the draw. They held nature and the outdoors in a kind of reverence, which translated to me, sinking deep into my heart and bloodstream, as well as all the corners of my mind. Since those young kid days, I have learned a tremendous amount more about nature than I knew back then. One of the best things I have discovered is the incredible regenerative powers of nature.

Nature is a true and tremendous friend that is all around and always around. I can talk to the wind and the trees, and the wild creatures listen and respond.

The rocks and the earth possess tremendous secrets, revealed in time to the patient. I’ve have learned that I can go into nature with a heavy heart, or a worried mind and, after doing nothing more than sitting or walking, return refreshed with my head on straight again. I still feel like a green-barked kid when it comes to my knowledge of all I want to know about nature. But despite my inability to know everything or much of anything really, I know enough to see that nature is understanding and knowledge in its purest form.

I am truly grateful for all my outdoor experiences. They helped form a single through line that leads to today as I sit here typing, thinking about getting “out there” for some fresh air, sights and sounds, as soon as I am finished here. I am outwardly reserved in my presentation to the world around me, but inside, I am just as excited to get in the car and ride or walk down a muddy trail today as I was as a kid all those decades ago.

That excitement never fades.

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.