As a financial contributor to and supporter of its mission, I’ve just received a copy of the latest issue of the Nature Conservancy magazine. It featured an article on the Conservancy’s efforts to reclaim and protect huge swaths of land in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, a region known in these parts simply as the U.P. For decades, large businesses operated by Easterners mined its minerals and cut down its pristine hardwood forests.
At one time, I was an avid camper and backpacker. I’ve camped and backpacked throughout the United States and the eastern and western Canadian provinces.
The U.P. is an isolated destination. It ends on the shores of icy Lake Superior. Known for spectacular Fall colors and long, frigid winters, the U.P. lacks the infrastructure to support a robust economy. Consequently, many of its young people leave to seek better employment opportunities elsewhere. Over time, this exodus has resulted in a dwindling population of permanent residents.
***
It has been three decades at least since I last made the long pilgrimage by automobile to Michigan’s upper peninsula. However, there are times when, in memory and my mind’s eye, I revisit this place of stark natural beauty: desolate, lonely, a place time seemingly has bypassed. And I’ll wonder whether any hardscrabble individualists remain, those rugged men who rely on their hunting and fishing skills to put food on the family table.
***
Bob and I were young men when I first visited the place. We drove overnight and arrived there as the sun was rising. In the gloom of an early morning, my car’s headlights startled a large adult black bear, which galloped across the road to escape us. For two big city fellas, sighting a bear provided an adrenaline rush, especially at the end of a very long drive. This was my jolting introduction to the north country.
Shortly, we picked out a campsite adjacent to the shores of Lake Superior and erected my still new NorthFace tent. Suddenly, I felt exhausted and told Bob I was going to catch some sleep. I crawled into my warm sleeping bag, while Bob remained outside to take in the sparkling lake waters. I was not quite asleep when, a few minutes later, I heard him exclaim, “Gary, there’s a bear in our camp!” I didn’t believe him and figured he was playing a joke. But he persisted.
And, when I emerged from the tent, I observed the cutest, Walt Disney-like bear cub playfully circling the tent. After a few moments, I heard a car door slam and saw a uniformed park ranger cautiously approaching. The cub quickly backed off into the trees and disappeared. “Where’s the mother?” he asked. Bob and I both shrugged. I thought about the large bear we’d seen earlier in the gloom. He told us the bears had been making the rounds among campers hoping to snag an easy meal. Now, he’d have to catch and relocate the pair.
To my ears, the ranger had sounded mildly put out by this notion on such a beautiful morning.
***
The next time I visited the north country I was a married man. My wife and I were backpacking on Isle Royale, Michigan, reputed to be the least visited park in the entire National Park system. While technically a part of Michigan, Isle Royale is actually nearer Minnesota by boat.
At some long ago and forgotten time, Lake Superior froze over and moose had wandered to the place from the mainland. Wolves had followed these moose. Today, their symbiotic relationship is one of the primary reasons people come to visit Isle Royale.
Though surrounded completely by water, a main hiking trail follows a spine of land that runs up the middle of Isle Royale, through deep woods, out of sight of the water. Indeed, we had to pack our own drinking water.
I recall that it was unseasonably hot, and that much of the trail was uphill before plunging into a forest. Soon we were sweating with our effort, and that’s when the mosquitos attacked – some of them large enough to carry off babies! Relentless mosquitos!
After hours of hiking under their siege, toward dusk we finally emerged from the woods onto flat, open land suitable for pitching a tent and setting up a camp. As the remaining daylight quickly faded, the bugs attacked us with increasing ferocity. We haphazardly threw up our now well-used NorthFace tent in record time, abandoning our stuffed backpacks on the ground, to flee inside and escape the insect onslaught. No food, no water, no fire. The next morning, I emerged from our tent to retrieve one of the water bottles, only to discover that it was covered by dozens of ravenous mosquitos, drawn to its surface by the heat.
We never saw a single moose, nor heard a solitary wolf howl. All we had to show for the trip were dozens of itchy bug bites, which over the following days we’d scratch bloody. A harbinger of a marriage doomed to fail?
***
Once, I went on a ski trip in the north country with Jane, and two or three other couples. Due to the frigid temperatures, the slopes were more ice than snow, which caused my ski edges to make loud, unnerving scraping noises. Think of the Titanic scraping against an iceberg.
I distinctly recall one morning when it was so cold my moustache froze rigidly while riding uphill in a lift chair, only to thaw out again during the ensuing downhill run. It went on like this throughout the frigid day; the warmer I got racing downhill, the harder my ‘stache felt during the ensuing ride back to the top.
***
There might have been one or two other visits beforehand, but my last visit to the north country involved another camping adventure with Craig, Donna, and Jane. This time I had reserved a wilderness cabin at the trail’s end, located on a clear stream that flowed into nearby Lake Superior. To call the place rustic would be charitable. Our tiny, rough-hewn wood cabin contained two rickety bunk beds with bare springs and a wood burning stove. Outside, we were provided with a grated fire pit and a long, weather-exposed two-person saw for cutting wood. We had to draw water from the stream, which had to be purified for cooking or drinking.
Two things stand out in my memory: First, Craig was insistent that we bring along his cooler loaded with beer and ice, which we carried a distance of several miles from the parking lot, through the woods, and across the stream to the cabin. Craig is a big, strong man. Me? Not so much, but how could I refuse my buddy?
Second, by sheer chance during our brief visit, the lake salmon were running upstream to spawn. Upon our arrival, literally thousands of them were crowded in the shallows by the cabin. It was a remarkable sight.
You’ve heard the familiar expression, “shooting fish in a barrel.” Perhaps had we either a barrel or a gun we might have feasted on salmon like royalty, but alas, I came to learn that spawning salmon are not the least bit interested in food –only the imperative to spawn.
Undeterred, Craig fashioned a primitive spear from a piece of wood with his knife, and attached a fishing line to it, thinking he could catch one or two of the large fish in this manner. (Simply scooping them up in a bucket, or even with our hands, did not seem sporting.)
However, it turns out that “shooting fish in a barrel” is not as easy as this phrase might imply. And that’s just as well because, as we later discovered, it is illegal to fish for spawning salmon.
***
I never visited the north woods with Lee, who nonetheless greatly enjoyed the outdoors, including tent camping, and to a lesser extent, backpacking. However, we had many fine outdoor adventures together elsewhere during her too-short life.
As for Robyn, well, I’ll only offer that she’s not exactly the outdoors type, although she occasionally does remind me that she once stayed in a KOA campground when her kids were young.
***
I will turn seventy-three in a little more than one month. I will be content if my backpacking days are behind me. I still have many fine memories.
I would consider tent camping, but only under near-perfect conditions and in the right locale. I am not ashamed to confess that these days I prefer sleeping in a comfy bed to sleeping on the hard, rocky ground.
