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Yurting in the U.P...

Thursday, 20 February 2014 00:10

By Dan Hedgecock (danhedgecock.com - 2/15)

Let me start off by saying that the people who populated the northern inland regions of the world are tough as a box of nails. I had a very concrete realization of this fact after Claire and I’s winter yurt adventure in the Porcupine Mountains last weekend. We drove up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula last Thursday with two backpacks full of clothes and food and spent two nights in two yurts. (A yurt is a soft-sided circular shelter) The trip was an absolute blast and incredibly gorgeous and like all our wilderness adventures pretty exhausting. Although it was warm with highs in the teens and lows only dipping down to...

positive single digits, it didn’t feel very warm at all every time I had to use the outhouse. In case you’ve ever wondered if an outhouse still smells even in the middle of winter, the answer is yes.

But back to the tough people. Claire and I only spent two nights in the yurts. All of the yurts were stocked with wood piles (We did have to bring in more wood from outside when we got low which was exhausting). We had modern fresh food. We didn’t have to do any “work”, just skiing from one yurt to the next. And still it was exhausting. I kept thinking about people who used to live like this through an entire winter. I wouldn’t have made it. For sure I would have gotten cabin fever after the first blizzard, eaten all of the food stockpiles in the month of December and then burned all the wood in January because I like to be comfortably warm. READ MORE