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 part 4 Crossing the Bridge There is a walk once a year across the Straits of Mackinac from Saint Ignace to Mackinaw City over the Mackinac Bridge.1 When my daughter was a toddler, we walked the big bridge, pushing her, tiny in her stroller, enjoying the camaraderie of others, enjoying the view, a meeting point of two Great Lakes—Huron and Michigan—and this engineering feat.2 The five-mile walk was bracing and tiring, but we headed back to Ann Arbor that very afternoon. Classes started at the university the next day. The contrast between life in the Upper Peninsula (known as the UP), with its rural, expansive landscape, and that facing students in my classes at Michigan, in the urbanized, southeastern part of the state, was stark. It was about differences in a way of life and expectations about the skills needed to prevail in it. The UP is a world unto its own where one can encounter an Old World culture of decent, polite people with strong families and allegiance to their region. The close family ties, networks, and support enable survival and the ability to cope. The UP is for those with stout hearts who can embrace all of what it offers: natural beauty; cold, long winters; and isolation. Tourism in both summer and winter is significant, with water sports, hunting, fishing, skiing, and stressfree downtime in a place where cell phones don’t always work. The Klaus farm and Dafter barn stories are those of farm families that are of, and work in, this environment and economy. ...

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