Holidays in the Keweenaw
With the return of the snow and as Christmas rapidly approached, cross country skiing took on a much higher priority in our daily activity. The Michigan Tech Trails are a sure bet to be one of the first trail systems to be groomed and they did not disappoint. We hit the trails at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon and arrived just in time for quite a burst of lake effect snow!
A really nice aspect of skiing the MTU Trails is its hub and spoke layout which provides multiple loops off of one central starting point. This allows us to ski together while at the same allowing me to jump off to ski more challenging trails and easily linking back up.
Christmas Eve found us up in Calumet to do some shopping at Cross Country Sports as well as getting in some skiing on the Swedetown Trails.
After completing our ski we drove back into Calumet to spend some time in solemn remembrance at the site of the Italian Hall Disaster. 108 years ago on Christmas Eve in 1913, 73 perished at a Christmas event held for the children of striking copper miners. While disagreement about the facts continue to this day, it was believed that someone associated with the Citizens Alliance entered the hall and shouted “fire”. Whatever the true cause, a stampede to the stairway down to the street below ensued. As some of those trying to escape fell, the stairway became a mass of humanity, largely children and women, with those trapped in the staircase being asphyxiated. Lost in this tragedy were my great-grandmother’s nieces Wilma and Sylvia Aaltonen and their mother Sanna. Wilma and Sylvia’s brothers survived and were ultimately adopted by other families after my great-grandmother’s brother Oscar Aaltonen left the mining district.
While growing up, I spent a good deal of many summers living with my grandmother who kept a basket a photographs at the family homestead. The basket contained many images from the disaster’s subsequent funeral which ultimately spurred a strong interest of mine in labor and economic history and ultimately a career direction that spanned from human resources and labor relations to workforce and economic development. A lot of history gets misplaced over time, but I appreciate how this important chapter has been preserved.
We had the dogs along with us and they needed to be run. We grabbed a pizza at Jim’s Pizza and drove out to the Woodland Trailhead on the back side of the Swedetown Trails. While there, we came across a couple of remote workers who had recently bought a home in the area. I provided them RWK hats and I hope to connect with them on a potential vignette.
On Christmas Day we had dinner with our friends Mark and Kathy along with a very small group of friends. Ahead of dinner, Mark and I skied off trail to a beaver pond with a tall lodge on its dam.
We skied through woods and fields until we were able to take in this view of Lake Superior.
I burned off Christmas dinner calories with a 5-mile run along US 41 on Sunday morning!
The Keweenaw Nordic Ski Club hosts the Candle Luminary Ski from 6 to 8 p.m. the day after Christmas. This free event is held annually on the St. Urho Loop at Maasto Hiihto starting from the Chalet at the Houghton County Fairgrounds in Hancock. Several of us from the KNSC board of directors along with a few other volunteers set up the event on Sunday afternoon and took it down after its completion.
More fresh snow entered the picture as seen below on the MTU campus on Monday morning and throughout the week creating excellent conditions for skiing!
Skiing the Portage Loop on Tuesday as part of our ski on the MTU Trails.
Phil also got the windows put into our garage project on Tuesday.
With the lake effect snow going again on Wednesday we skied the Tolkien Trails at MTU with our friend Beverly.
Thursday brought more lake effect snow and some really nice ski conditions at Swedetown with Beverly and Jennifer.
With the lake effect snow continuing to fall, New Year’s Eve was spent skiing with friends on the MTU Trails.
You may be noting a theme here. When you live in the Keweenaw, embracing winter and taking advantage of the opportunities available in these beautiful surroundings is a big part of what makes life here so amazing. Take a deeper dive into our ubiquitous natural beauty by checking out our Pinterest boards at https://www.pinterest.com/RemoteWorkforceKeweenaw/boards/. If you are considering the possibility to locating your remote work career here, be sure to visit https://remoteworkforcekeweenaw.com