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The two-track road leading to the stream hadn’t changed much since the last time I had traveled it. Thinking back, I realized that nearly 18 years had passed and my vivid memory of the road’s path and surrounding terrain wasn’t lost. The road was cut through the rolling evergreen forest in the early 1980s to make way for the large logging trucks and machinery necessary to harvest the trees and move them to the nearby sawmills. Most of the old-growth pines had long since disappeared and in its place stood a second growth coniferous forest planted in tidy rows, intermingling with aspens and poplars. For thousands of years, between occasional fires, the skyward view here had been a soaring green cathedral created by a tightly knit pine canopy until it was quickly lost to logging. I listened to the distant crescendo of buzzing cicadas and the whirring of grasshoppers taking flight and the noonday sun felt hot on my neck and face as I walked.

The trek was long but the road remained sufficiently open and the going was fairly easy. The only thing I felt in the past while walking to this stream was the anticipation of getting there, but now I could feel the passage of the years in my legs and back and that got me to wondering what I’d do if I suffered a bad fall or some such mishap out in the middle of nowhere. I also wondered if the trout would be where I expected them to be, occupying the holes in the bends of the stream and the deeper riffles and undercuts. There was a pretty good chance that the stream might not be there any longer, and a better chance that the stream wouldn’t be anything like I remembered it. Or, if the stream were still there, perhaps there wouldn’t be any fish in it to catch.

The mile of open land halted abruptly at the edge of a dense pine forest, which could be seen from a distance as I crested high points along the road. Twenty years earlier, men and machinery stopped their northward progress where a straight line of old-growth white pines still stands defiantly. My backpack, containing waders, boots, lunch and all of my fly fishing gear, was becoming heavy on my shoulders, so I decided to rest once I reached the tall pines.

The moment I entered the forest, the obvious changes were the noticeable drop in temperature and the abundance of bird noises. The birds seemed to be everywhere in and among the pine bows and, like me, sought refuge from the hot sun and heat. Bird songs sounded different there among the tall pines; their chirps and warbles didn’t stay in the air very long before the trees absorbed them as effectively as acoustical tiles.

Following a short rest, I began walking again and after ten minutes knew that the stream wasn’t far. It was a short time later that the forest floor began to drop quite sharply and it was at that moment that I could hear and see the moving water below. I took a diagonal route down the bank to the stream, using the trees and saplings for handholds, and when I got to the water’s edge I was pleased to see that the little stream remained, just as I hoped it would. Slowly walking along the soft bank, I stared into the deeper runs and riffles and could see brook trout moving sideways, finning in the current, their mottled olive backs dark against the light sandy streambed. One fish caught sight of me and quickly shot upstream, abandoning its feeding lie to seek refuge under a root wad.

Sometimes I wonder what forces are at work that compel us and lead us back to particular places. Perhaps it’s necessary for each of us to re-visit memorable places from our past at one time or another, if only to hope for and validate their continuing existence. And, if we can free our minds of thoughts in the here and now, we just might be lucky enough to again experience the enchanted emotions of our youth.

A couple of summers ago, I returned to just such a place. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I felt compelled that day to walk the same road and hear the same sounds and take in the same smells and catch wild brook trout in an old familiar stream that few people knew about or cared enough to fish.

Returning to that small stream felt comfortable, like a visit from an old friend. After stringing up my little six-foot brush rod and plucking a colorful #16 Royal Wulff out of my fly box, it felt like only a day or two had passed since I’d last fished there, and the excitement of catching that first colorful brook trout felt the same as it did eighteen years earlier. It’s reassuring to find yourself spending time with an old friend that you haven’t seen in years and discover that he or she hasn’t essentially changed too much. Of course, this experience can’t be fully appreciated and cherished unless we ourselves don’t fundamentally change too much either.

Dan Brown’s weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie’s Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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