Up North written by Sam Cook.

This is the Northern Tier Staff reading of a poem that has impacted every person who has ever put on a staff uniform for Tier.

Special thanks to Dan Rogan, Heidi Hummel, Phil Daily, Virginia Wightman, Martin Kulstad , and Tyler Sanders for all of your help putting this together.

“Up North is a certain way the wind feels on your face and the way an old wool shirt feels on your back. It’s the peace that comes over you when you sit down to read one of your old trip journals, or the anticipation that bubbles inside when you start sorting through your tackle box in the early spring.

Up north is the smell of the Duluth pack hanging in your basement and the sound of pots clinking across the lake. It’s a raindrop clinging to a pine needle and the dancing light of a campfire on the faces of friends.

Up north is a lone set of cross-country ski tracks across a wilderness lake and wood smoke rising from a cabin chimney. It’s bunchberries in June, blueberries in July and wild rice in September.

Each of us has an up north. It’s a time and place far from the here and now. It’s a map on the wall, a dream in the making, a tugging at one’s soul. For those who feel the tug, who make the dream happen, who put the map in the packsack and go, the world is never quite the same again.

We have been Up North. And part of us always will be.”
-Sam Cook as quoted from his book "Up North."