Friend: I know somebody who is proud of the fact that he hasn’t crossed the bridge more than five times in his life.
Me: You mean the Mackinac Bridge? (The famous five-mile bridge connecting the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan.)
Friend: Oh my God, no. I mean the Houghton-Hancock bridge in the Keweenaw.
I nearly threw up in my mouth a little as I had this conversation with a dear friend over this past weekend. For some the UP can be considered fairly big. It’s pretty spacious and it takes forever to get from one town to another because of one-lane highways and the massive forests everywhere. Some people can live their whole lives without going over the Mackinac Bridge and seeing the “other part” of the state. Hell, my mom didn’t drive on freeways until she was forced to do so in order to come and visit me in Minnesota. So yes, you can isolate yourself fairly easily living in Michigan’s UP.
What is nearly incomprehensible to me is a person who has barely left the Keweenaw Peninsula, a tiny area of the UP where there are a few tiny mining towns, a couple of parks and a whole lot of biggotry. I grew up in the area and even during my semi-angsty teen years I had enough self-awareness to recognize that the narrow-mindedness of the area was suffocating me. I had to get out, even if it was only to a bigger UP town at first. There was no way that I could live in an area where God and Guns is considered the only way of life and where most people think that a high school diploma is a sufficient education and women need to be baby factories. I looked at the world differently. I asked questions. I didn’t want to settle; I wanted more than what the area could offer. Some people didn’t like that.
People like Mr. Nothing-But-the-Keweenaw make me sad. If someone wants to make a life in the area, that’s great. Go find your bliss. But if you’re choosing to not experience more of the world because of some small-minded ideas you may have, then I feel sorry for you. The world has so much to offer, so to isolate or confine yourself to a small corner of it is nearly incomprehensible to me. I want to experience all that life has to offer. I want to kiss under the Eiffle Tower, road trip across Route 66, dance in the streets during Carnivale and indulge in plates of pasta in Italy. I want to experience the world. I want more than a small-town life can offer me. I need to experience life as fully as I possibly can. That is the reason why I needed to leave Michigan. That is the reason why I am who I am and why I am on this journey we all call life.
