Tent Camping Prep for Winter

The plan for the long winter in the UP of Michigan

The living and the dying in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

My eight-year-old Great Pyrenees, Maycee, and I are in our 10th week of tent camping on family woodlands in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The deciduous leaves are beginning to change colors. They don’t all look like a blend of fire-colored wonder as yet, but we’re not far away.

And I am focused on doing the following things before we leave:

• Figuring out what to do with things that we won’t take with us for the winter months.
• Cutting maple, balsam fir (pine), and oak branches into sizes I can use to make crosses even if we’re not here, along with other wood carving surprises.
• Deciding on where to go!
• Squeezing every possible moment I can out of every single day in the woods around Marquette, Michigan because even if I can never come back because of some unforeseen circumstances, the essence of being here will live inside me, renewed after a 40-year bear.
• Meeting as many great Yoopers as possible, and making sure Maycee gets in an equal amount of socialization, without us being eat by a bear(s).

What to Leave Behind