You're Gonna Love Winter

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Keith Meyers, who grew up in  Chicago, knew something about winter. But he didn’t know one important thing about himself until he moved to the Keweenaw Peninsula after 35 years in Kansas.

“I wasn’t so sure that I was going to be a roof person,” he says. Indeed, that first winter in his Chassell home, he wasn’t. “A friend shoveled our roof.”

Brad Barnett, a native Kentuckian who moved to Houghton, didn’t even know being a “roof person” was a choice … until during his family’s first winter when a neighbor moseyed over and gently mentioned the snow was getting pretty deep up there and used words like “collapse.” Brad hired the roof shoveling out … until the snow got so high by the house in one spot he could literally walk up to the roof to clear the snow.

Both Upper Peninsula transplants proudly became “roof people” (though Brad admits he now outsources). Both have taken on jobs that promote the region to visitors or

prospective residents. What’s more, both men and their families can’t wait for the white to come.

“It’s all about the winter; that’s really a key element,” says Keith about moving to his new happy place.

Keith has U.P. roots; both of his parents grew up here and he would frequently visit his grandmother – primarily in the summer – in Chassell. “It’s always been a place that I’ve had a strong affinity for,” he says. So when he was able to take an early retirement from his job as state director of training services in Topeka, Kansas, “There was no question where I wanted to go.”

Keith, his wife, Julie (a Kansas native) and their dogs moved north, waaaay north. Hardly old enough for real retirement, he has been applying his economic development skills to his adopted home. He is vice chair of the Chassell Township Planning Commission and founded Remote Workforce Keweenaw, a website and a movement to attract

On the workforce website, Keith lists attractive statistics about the Keweenaw – 125 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, average home price of $169,147, average rental of $700 a month, 84% forested land in the U.P. … and averging more than 200 inches (270 in Copper Harbor!) of snowfall each winter. No doubt his Kansas colleagues might not consider that last an appealing attribute.

The website also proclaims, “You will love working remotely in the Keweenaw Peninsula if you …” No. 1 on the six-point list that follows: “Embrace winter … With an average of 200 inches of snow each winter, those who move to the Keweenaw Peninsula must find joy in the winter wonderland.”

Embrace it Keith and Julie did, and do. “Even before the snow flew that first winter, we’d bought our cross-country skiing equipment during the fall sale at Downwind Sports.”

Keith is now secretary for the Keweenaw Nordic Ski Club board of directors. During the winter, he and Julie strap on the skis and hit the trails almost every other day. Almost every Sunday, they join a retired Michigan Technological University professor who hosts afternoon or sometimes moonlight skis.

“It’s almost magical to ski under moonlight,” says Keith. “Sometimes it can be really cold, but they’re just really fun gatherings.”

About that cold – the Keweenaw temperatures actually are one of the things that Keith didn’t anticipate. “It’s fascinating that it’s not nearly as cold as people might think it is. Here, Lake Superior has a moderating impact on the temperature.”

That long winter’s nap in the region does make spring, summer and fall all the sweeter, Keith believes, but “As we get toward the end of winter, we’re actually kind of sad to

see it go.”

Snow melt, after all, ends skiing. “Some of the crazies up here will try to stretch the skiing season into May,” Keith muses, then admits, “we’ll ski as far into April as we possibly can.”

For Brad, it was education, not retirement, that first brought his family to the Keweenaw. “Our first real winter was 2013; I was a student at Michigan Tech.”

In Houghton, he seemed to be constantly shoving snow, all the while thinking, “Things are going to melt, don’t worry.” But the melt didn’t come and the snow kept piling up. “Then the roof starts creaking a little bit, and you are getting the car stuck in snowbanks you think you can drive through. … Honestly, I thought I knew about winters after living in Anchorage, Alaska, for several years after college. But it sure shocked me when my Keweenaw neighbor told me I should think about shoveling off my roof because it was about to collapse from the snow-load.

“It was sort of a holy-cow moment,” says Brad. He recalls proudly how he took advantage of that snow pile in one corner that created a  slide from the rooftop down to main street. “I didn’t even need a ladder by the time the season was over.”

He and his wife, Erin, a Georgia native, first bought the wrong stuff and soon after the right stuff for winter. “You accumulate the right gear … better snow pants, Yooper Scoopers. My next snowblower will be the one with the heated handles.”

In Kentucky where Brad grew up, winter meant traffic grinding to a halt if a couple inches of snow fell. Brad chuckles that it seemed like “two guys with a pick truck and plow

were in charge of the whole state.”

He shares photos of the U.P. winter with his family back in Kentucky just to enjoy their “Oh, that’s nuts!” reactions.

Their daughter Eleanor is growing up in a whole different world. “There are after-school skiing programs – we wouldn’t have something like that in Kentucky – and every community has its own ice rink. There’s that embracing of winter sports.”

Some things are similar between his hometown of Campbellsburg and the Keweenaw. “Both parts of the country are rural with a small town feel, with teachers who remember your mom and your dad,” Brad says. One area cultivates nature, though, and the other is cultivated by it.

“The love of the outdoors is even more so up here – and again the love of snow – it’s part of the DNA up here.”

In 2019, Brad became executive director of the Keweenaw Convention & Visitors Bureau. He loves pitching the quality of the region to attract visitors, who sometimes

become new residents.

Both Brad and Keith were delighted to see the latest U.S. Census figures showing that Houghton County grew in population – 682 people, an almost 9% increase from 2010 – though all other U.P. counties lost population, anywhere from 3% to 5%.

Many credit the influence of Michigan Tech with drawing new, younger and more diverse residents, but Keith feels that ability to work remotely in a magnificent landscape helps, too. He now keeps touch with more than 50 newbies who do just that – like one man who works with a company based in France, connecting with Europe in the morning and the West Coast in the afternoon “and skis in between.”

While winter tickles Brad and Keith and Lake Superior and the North Woods fascinates them, the heart of the Keweenaw – the people – create the solid base on which they know the community stands.

“Everything that’s at the core of who I am is in the U.P.,” says Keith. Winter especially, he points out, can show you the true measure of your neighbors.

The first winter he and Julie lived in Chassell, they agreed to take care of a home near Liminga, some 16 miles northwest along U.S. 41 and the Houghton Canal Road. One day Keith decided to make the round-trip between the two towns. Keith says his weather-wary wife’s response to that idea was “No, no, no … a storm is coming.”

Plenty of time, Keith assured her. The first part went well, but on the return trip, the storm arrived in full force.

“It was blinding snow. It was a totally bad decision to be out; you could not see the road,” recalls Keith.

He could hear the rumble strip when his tires hit it … but he couldn’t tell if it was the strip in the middle or on the side of the roadway.

He found out which it was when the vehicle was sucked into a drift.

“I ended up on the side of the road, really stuck,” Keith says. “I wasn’t there less than 5 minutes and this person stopped in that blinding snow and helped push me back out.”

Once the car was freed, the fellow, unnamed, popped back into his own vehicle and disappeared in the snow.

“A few miles farther up the road,” continues Keith, “a vehicle on 41 had hit the snowbank.”

Time to balance the karma, he decided, and went over to help. “I started pushing and before I realized what was going on, I had three people helping me.”

No one asked what political signs were in each other’s yards, what religion they follow or where they grew up.

“It just doesn’t matter because everybody recognizes the human condition. It’s just really cool,” says Keith, musing “maybe everybody is always paying it forward up here

because we realize you might be next.”

Brad thinks that like a love of the outdoors, a commitment to neighbor helping neighbor is just part of the community DNA.

“There’s a lot to be said for that in the Keweenaw. Neighbors up here generally look out for each other. It’s not unusual for someone to come and just plow our driveway after the (city) plow comes by. It’s stuff like that – sometimes it’s a small gesture, sometimes it’s a big gesture.”

How the Keweenaw approaches winter was personified for Brad by one particular neighbor after yet another a storm.

“This 80-year-old woman … she’s out there shoveling and grinning. We don’t just survive winter, we celebrate it. Whether its praying to Heikki Lunta (the Finnish snow god) to bring more snow or building giant snow statues during Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival, we take pride in the season.”

Because, as Brad says, “If you don’t love snow, you’ve got a long five to six months ahead of you.”