Karen Wils photo At right, are some snowshoes in the U.P. snow. Go for a snowshoe hike. Nature is the best medicine.

ESCANABA — Times are tough, but Yoopers are tougher.

This is not the first time we have been grounded by illness.

Back in 1846, Father Frederic Baraga snowshoed into the U.P. wilderness, bringing prayers and smallpox vaccines to the native peoples that lived in the remote woodlands. So many Native Americans died of smallpox back then. This “new” disease that was brought over by the white men ran wild. The Native Peoples had no immunity to it.

Many miles beneath white pine boughs were traveled before medicine reached everybody in need. Many hours were canoed and tossed by the waves of Great Lake waters before smallpox was controlled.

Jack pines and a sand point in Little Bay de Noc made an ideal setting for the new city of Escanaba. But in our town’s early days, an epidemic took place. The young town was thriving with lumbermen, ore trains, docks, fishing boats and families everywhere.

The city’s water filtration plant and the waste water plant were too near each other. Cholera was making people sick from drinking contaminated water. Once discovered, chlorine was added to the water filtration process. The illness was over, and lessons were learned.

In 1918, the Spanish influenza spread like wildfire all over the wartorn world. It took millions of lives around the globe and some in Michigan before healing occurred.

My mother would tell stories about the days before the polio vaccine. The fear of young people waking up one morning and not being able to move their legs was a real thing in my mother’s day. President Franklin Roosevelt was proof of the power of polio. Then, in 1953, Dr. Salk created a vaccine for polio.

Today, we battle the coronavirus. Common sense, positive thinking and many prayers are what are needed to take on this enemy.

Our parents and great-grandparents lived through some pretty rough times, too. What got them through were family and a sense of community.

So now we focus on family and home. For most of our lifetime, we have been so fortunate, traveling when and where we want, eating out several times a week, having others care for and teach our children and tend to our senior citizens.

Now, for a few weeks, we will have to put all of our focus on our family and our home community.

We are very blessed to be Yoopers at times like this. The medical experts are saying to distance ourselves from large group social settings. Here in the small, slightly “backwoods” area of the U.P., it is a little easier to be separated from big groups.

Maybe this is a good time to reconnect with nature. Be outdoors, walk the dog, go for a hike or bike ride.

In the olden days, many Yoopers were snowed in or cabin bound until spring break-up. They found things to do, like reading, knitting, woodworking, journaling, painting or wildlife-watching.

While we wait out this virus, we can tap maple trees and do a little syrup making. We can watch the rivers open up with their dramatic shoves of ice. On the south side of the house we may even be able to rake the newly-exposed grass.

Have patience and pray. Love for one another is what will get us through.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.