Why I Can't Stop Daydreaming About Moving to the U.P.

Amazon just opened up a new delivery hub in the Upper Peninsula, bringing the time between ordering and delivery down from a week to two days or less.

That’s another bit of ammo for me to use on my wife who has to hear about my scatterbrained ideas to move our family somewhere far North to escape the madness of modernity.

Between Amazon and Starlink internet, it’s totally possible for us to live and work in some remote outpost or small town up in God’s Country. I admit, there would be some downsides to becoming full-time Yoopers, but are they insurmountable?

It started with a summer trip up there last year. We went to Grand Marais for a few days and then over to Copper City and then down to Paulding. It was fantastic weather, but chilly for August.

When I was up there, I saw some property for sale, wooded acreage with a cabin. It was for sale by owner, not on Zillow.

Since then, I’ve checked Zillow about once a month. There are dozens of properties across the U.P. that I would love to buy—historic houses with more square footage than I currently have for half the price.

Some are in town, some are far out in the wilderness.

I think about how it would change our finances to have a smaller mortgage. The price of groceries would likely be higher. We wouldn’t have Costco nearby (there are none in the U.P.), and there are no Trader Joe’s up there, either.

We would have to make some sacrifices and live more ascetically. The dining is limited to what’s in town. The company is also limited to who’s close by, especially in the winter—the big reason my wife won’t let me stake our claim up there.

Those of us who’ve spent our lives under the bridge have a vague understanding of just how brutal the winter is that far north. All I know about it is what some of the Copper City locals told me: Road crews keep the sidewalks and streets clean, and a fireplace is essential.

I guess there’s also the Keweenaw Peninsula Snow Thermometer, which charts in feet the amount of flakes that are dumped on the upper reaches of the state annually. But it’s impossible to imagine the drifts as we drove by the hulking structure in late August.

I think there’s only one way to find out how hard the winters really are, and that takes living through one. I like to think that I am smart enough to keep the house stocked for whatever comes our way, and humble enough to depend on our neighbors for the rest.

Maybe that’s the biggest part of the daydream: choosing to be outside the smooth lanes of modernity and comfort in exchange for something raw and untamed.

I admit my yearning is especially bad when I read about AI singularity events from prognosticators of doom. Instead of trusting in Providence, I think how much easier it would be to insulate my children from our impending dystopian future farther away from the bulk of society.

That’s the double-edged nature of the Upper Peninsula. There’s so much wilderness up there, so many jagged rocks and coasts and waterfalls to explore. There’s so much beauty alongside the vast emptiness where long roads cut through endless forest.

Sure, Amazon can deliver in two days and Starlink can provide internet good enough to stream Apple TV+, but maybe you’re still 30 minutes from the grocery or snowed in for a week at a time between December and February.

You can have some modern amenities, enough to make it work. But it’s still a different way of life, a harder one. I can’t shake the feeling despite my better judgement that maybe it would be worth it in the end.

And that’s why I keep checking Zillow.