I’ve often wondered what people thought about when they think of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Some call it the “Frozen Tundra,” other’s refer to to it as “god’s country.” I’ve always referred to it as home. Full of quaint little towns, handheld pasty-pies, Da Yoopers, snowmobile and biking trails, the mighty Lake Superior, camp-life and a place the Michigan trolls from below the bridge come to when they need some respite, breathe some fresh air and leave with a fudge hangover.
That’s the postcard they sell you anyway.
I was born in Ishpeming, MI, just outside of Marquette. Ishpeming is an Ojibwe word meaning, “on the summit” or “high place.” It’s location sits comfortably on a ridge, 850 ft above Lake Superior. The town was driven early on by the discovery of Iron Ore which attracted Scandinavian immigrants to turn it into the biggest Iron Ore producer in the United States. We were known as the Ishpeming Hematite’s in school.
Yes, a rock. We were a rock.
I always felt isolated growing up in the U.P. I sat with my thoughts a lot. There wasn’t much to do, at least, not the stuff I wanted to do. My friends with married parents would go to universal studios or Puerto Vallarta in the summer, and I’d be going to Wisconsin to visit my Dad for a couple weeks in the summer or hang out on the same beach with my Mom year after year. Sometimes we’d end up at my aunt and uncles camp on the Dead River Basin, where my cousins and I would play in the lake, catch fish and take saunas as soon as the sun would dip below the horizon. Sometimes I’d carry a sleeping bag out to my backyard, with a few snacks and my walk-man and just stargaze for hours until I fell asleep. I'd wake up shivering because even though it’d be July, the air still turned much cooler at night coming off of Lake Superior not too far away. Lake Superior was so brisk, people have gotten hypothermia in the middle of summer. It usually stays at a balmy, 55 degrees. I’ve never known a brave soul who’s challenged the mighty lake and lived to tell the tale. Every year, college students from out of town drown, taking it’s currents and temperature for granted.
Growing up Yooper was suffocating at times. I wanted to see the world so bad. I loved getting lost in the forests and never being too far away form a river, creek or lake. It also gave me deep peacefulness that I’ve never experienced anywhere else before. But I had big dreams of breaking out of there and living some big city life, filled with adventure, meeting interesting people, indulging in unique food and culture, making loads of money. It’s an entire world I lived inside for thirty four years before I finally left it for good. I grew up swimming and camping and became an expert of roasting the perfect marshmallow over the fire. I was a champion fisherman to my kids and a professional fort builder and wasn’t a stranger to hard work hauling and splitting wood, and in the winters, moving hundreds of inches of snow - sometimes up to three times in a single day. The snow just never fucking stopped — for 7 months straight!
I was six hours north of Detroit and closer to Canada than to my own state capital. In the 80’s and 90’s it was a running joke anytime Michigan would be brought up on the national news or on some TV program and they always left out the U.P. The mitten was there… but the Yoop was forgotten. At least until my friend, Olympic gold medalist, Nick Baumgartner competed in the Olympics for the first time. Thanks to him, the U.P. has never been left off the map, well, that I’ve noticed anyway.
I grew up understanding early, that my little corner of the world was a geographical and political afterthought to the rest of the world, including my own country. A hidden gem I never really fully appreciated. It did something to me as a kid. I think it’s because at a very tender age, I had already felt forgotten by my family, I wanted the world to know I existed. Growing up in the U.P. made me self-sufficient and then it made me leave. A lot of Yoopers do this. I wasn’t the only one. There’s two camps of people in the Yoop: those who stay and those who leave and never look back. I was one of those who slammed the door behind me.
Winter in the U.P. isn’t the Hallmark-like snow you see glistening across everything like a cotton candy dream. No, no, no. Winter in the Yoop is raging in main character energy for over half the year. The first snowflakes begin to fall just before Halloween and the last snowflakes melt by the middle to end of May. It’s the kind of snow that shuts down country roads for days, snow that gets so heavy it caves in rooftops or homes and businesses, snow you measure in feet - not inches. In the Keweenaw Peninsula, it’s not unusual to have snowfall totals over 300 inches in one year.
And yes. The following photo is after one snowstorm and when I opened the garage door, it was almost as tall as me. I’m 5’5”.
I also learned to read ice. Because not all ice is the same. The killer in the U.P. is black ice. This is the ice you can’t see. And it doesn’t matter if you’re going well below the speed limit, if you hit a patch of black ice, you go sailing for the ride of your life and there’s nothing you can do about it. I was 17 years old driving home from the Christmas Day Green Bay Packer game. It was midnight when I finally turned onto US 41 and began the final stretch home. I was only 30 minutes from home, tired, ready to take a hot shower and snuggle into bed. I was only going 25-30 miles an hour. The snow was really coming down by then and it was hard to see, so I was taking it slow and then out of nowhere, WHAM, I hit a small patch of black ice and went flying in the ditch. It felt like I was going 60 miles an hour into the woods just to the side of the road. The box of my boyfriend’s truck was nestled in between two great big oak trees when we finally quit moving, the truck was buried in snow. We called the tow truck and as the tow truck was hooking up to our truck, two more vehicles hit that same patch of ice and came barreling down the road towards us. One flew to the other side of the road in the ditch and the other one stopped just short of us.
Winter is dangerous in the Yoop. So, most of the time, we’d try to find something to do that didn’t require going anywhere, unless it was one of the many local sledding hills just down the road in every direction. Everyone always carries two types of vehicle coverage there, even if the car is rusted out and 25 years old — deer coverage (liability) and tow coverage. Because we’re either getting stuck or hitting deer. Every goddamn year.
Then there’s the old mine shafts. Even if your family wasn’t in them, the mines are in you. Ishpeming, Negaunee, the entire Marquette Range, built by an industry that pulled iron out of the ground and pulled while communities out of Cornwall and Finland and French Canada to do it. My early generations of family came from Quebec for that very work. My uncles were union guys and bosses at the mines before they closed. The miens shaped the towns, the churches, the last names, the food, the Yooper-brand and then they closed down — one by one and people began to leave. The cute little bustling towns where everyone knew everyone turned to rot as the mines closed and the jobs dried up. By the time I was graduated from high school in 2000, I was left with a place still shaped lie the thing that built it, minus the thing itself. The infrastructure decayed, the roads were full of potholes, mom and pop shops closed and most of the little shops downtown were empty. Today, my hometown is nothing short of a ghost town with the old mine shaft carcasses succumbing to nature, overthrown by trees and bushes an vines. Swallowing them up.
Yooper’s are tough though. They are some of the toughest people I know. It’s not a performative tough because there’s nobody around to perform it to. You’re not tough for an audience. You’re tough for survival. Because the nearest hospital might be an hour away, you might be snowed in for a week and have to survive on canned food and potatoes until the roads are clear again, because the power goes out when the snow is heavy and you have to keep the fire burning in the woodstove to stay warm until it’s restored again… which could take days. Because, self sufficiency and mental toughness is in our DNA.
By the time I was 11 years old, I knew how to change a tire, how to pull a vehicle out of a ditch, split and stack firewood, clean and filet fish, shoot a rifle and drive. I knew how to keep a woodstove going all night, how to stay prepared for when the big storms happen. I also learned how to sit with silence because there wasn’t always something to fill it with. I developed my love for space in childhood. Star gazing and learning the sky was one of my favorite things to do as a child. A modern day Copernicus or Galileo. If I was lucky, some nights I’d even have the privilege of seeing a UAP whiz back and forth in the sky above me. Satellites don’t move left and right and move at 90 degree angles. It was truly a sight to see! In August I always watched the Perseid meteor shower and the northern lights would stop anyone in their tracks. No matter how many times you’ve seen them appear out of nowhere and dance across the night sky above you.
But, under all of it, there was also a tenderness about growing up Yooper. A place that hard produced people who took care of each other with a ferocity that didn’t discriminate. Nobody’s bringing you a casserole because they’re trying to win a popularity contest. They’re just doing it, because that’s what you do when someone’s roof caves in or someone’s husband dies, or has a baby. Because everyone up there has been on the other end of that need at some point and remembers it.
What I grew up in didn’t exist anymore when I became an adult. The village was gone. People became desperate and mean and started sticking to themselves more. The old heads died off and they were the real glue that held everyone together.
I left in 2016. Most of the people my age did. For whatever reason, work, warmth, escaping trauma or just somewhere with more than one stoplight. But you don’t stop being a Yooper just because you left that cold run-down peninsula. It’s in the cadence of the telling accent, the cold tolerance that outlasts decades in Texas, the reflex to check the starless Texas sky before you walk back inside the house. It’s a place that designs you and shapes you before you’re old enough to realize you’re being made.
That’s the part the postcard never really gets right.
For those of you who do not know who Da Yoopers are, here you go:
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Thank you for being here. Seriously. You make this worth doing.
~Eevie
Hey, Eviee, thanks for this! My affiliations are more in Wisconsin (Minocqua area) but of course I love the UP. The Yoopers are priceless-- The Second Week of Deer Camp is my all-time favorite but Rusty Chevrolet is high up on my hit parade.
I loved reading this! I’m a troll, but oh, how I love da Yoop, yah. If I had the big bucks, I would purchase a retirement home up there. I know it’s a hard life in the winter, but there’s just something magical about the place. I have it easy downstate here in Grand Rapids, but the rugged challenge is so appealing to me. Thank you for this super cool memoir!