I often expressed my desire to write a book, but that’s as far as it got. My wife, Liz, gently nudged me in the right direction. It took a while. Talking about writing and actually doing it are two very different things.

How long have you spent researching and writing…and where have you found your material?
This is the fourth year of work on this project. Actually, it goes back longer—to the late 90s when I wrote a never-published story on the Storm of ’38—Upper Michigan’s most famous storm of the last century. I looked at old newspapers and interviewed people who lived through the experiences. We decided it was necessary to travel the entire Upper Peninsula and do research. We visited historical societies and libraries from Sault Ste. Marie to Ironwood and from Menominee to the Copper Country. Along the way, I gave talks presenting material from the book-in-progress. I gave a presentation at the Dickinson County Library in Iron Mountain. Afterward, a woman came up to me and told me a story about her father and 19 other people who became stranded on a sheet of ice that broke off from the mainland and drifted toward the open waters of Lake Superior. She then sent me information on it, which was included in the book.

At another point, the Delta County Historical Society generously published an excerpt from the book in their newsletter. The piece was on the famous Armistice Day Storm of 1940. Somehow, the newsletter got into the hands of a gentleman down state whose grandfather helped rescue sailors off a freighter stranded off the Garden Peninsula. He sent me material on the rescue. It was this kind of digging, mixed with synchronicity and luck that brought me a lot of information.

How big is the book, format, pictures, etc.?
The book is paperbound in a 7X10 format. There are over 200 photographs and nearly 100 maps scattered through its nearly 400 pages. It is not a scholarly work, in that I did not go the footnote route. I wanted the book to be accessible to the average reader. I like to call it “History for People on-the-go.” By that, I mean you can open the book almost anywhere and read a relatively short, concise piece of information on a story, adventure or weather event. It doesn’t have to be read cover-to-cover in sequence to get a piece of useful, and I hope, entertaining information. I do supply a bibliography as well as an appendix, which contains a glossary of weather terms.

How did the book get its intriguing title?
I started simply with “U.P. Weather Stories.” One of our friends commented that it was a boring title, so I kicked it around for a while—this project has been in my thoughts incessantly, I dream about it. I had read through a book by James K. Jamison called “This Ontonagon Country.” In one of the opening pages he put in a quote from Peter White. The words fascinated me and I looked for and found the speech in another book. White’s speech was given on August 5, 1905 at the 50th anniversary celebration of the opening of the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. It was the keynote address at the event and contained the story of the Upper Peninsula’s early pioneer settlement, which was really White’s story—he came to the “Iron Hills” with Robert Graveraet in the summer of 1849 at the age of 18 and spent the rest of his life here. Toward the close of the speech he said, and I’m paraphrasing, “We who have seen the Lake Superior region’s development, may pause in wonder that so few and so feeble a people, living under so cold a sky, should have permitted to share so largely in changing the seat of empire and enlarging the happiness of the world.”

Well, “So Cold a Sky” was it. What better way to describe the environment here. Peter White, along with the other men and women who came to Upper Michigan in the nineteenth century, lived under that cold sky and scaled almost insurmountable obstacles to settle this rugged section of land that most Americans of the day considered a worthless, frozen wasteland, if they even knew about it at all. “So Cold a Sky” is about the spirit of the people who settled this place and those who live here today—they are still a pretty rugged, independent lot.

What is one of your favorite historical stories?
It has to be the story of Charlie and Angelique Mott. This couple was invited to explore Isle Royale with a group of downstate speculators in the summer of 1843. The Ojibwa had just ceded their last chunk of land, which included the island, to the United States. A mineral rush ensued, with adventurers and entrepreneurs flowing in to stake their claims. The downstate businessmen became excited after Angelique, a full-blooded Chippewa, came upon a piece of float copper. The men hired Angelique and Charlie to stay in a small cabin on the island during the summer to guard their claim. The couple jumped at the chance to earn $30 dollars a month and were dropped on the island July 1, 1843 with a small cache of food, a birch-bark canoe, and a fishing net. They also landed with a promise of a boat-load of supplies and a trip off the island by October 1. Neither promise was kept. What followed is a story of grisly tragedy, despair and ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit.

Whose journals and diaries have you read for data?
I uncovered bits of weather-related data and stories in “Relations” a series of journals kept by the Jesuits. A number of historians pored over these extensive volumes and have distilled their works into more accessible bits of information. I thank them for their dedication. I read Alexander Henry’s memoirs of his Lake Superior sojourn during the mid-eighteenth century. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote an extensive volume with a title that’s a paragraph long about his two decades up here. I got the chance to read an original copy of it at the Peter White Library. A librarian would unlock the cabinet in the Shiras Room and pull out the frayed, old book for me to read. I also got a lot from Ruth Douglass’s diary. She lived on Isle Royale between 1848 and 1849. Bishop Baraga’s diary was also a wealth of information during the period that spanned a good chunk of the mid-nineteenth century.

Is there another book up your sleeve?
Oh yes. I’m already thinking about the next one, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. We want to make sure this book is done right. There’s a lot of work to do to get a work like this ready.

When may we expect to see this book on store shelves?
By springtime. Of course, spring starts here very slowly, so that gives me some leeway! I really wanted it to be out by last Christmas, but when you are writing while working your regular day job, things move slowly. But now it is just about to the point where it’s ready to go, so I’m confident that before the trees green up, you’ll be able to walk into your favorite bookstore and find “So Cold a Sky—Upper Michigan Weather History.”