All right, so I don't know the right way to tell this.

I've tried.

I've sat down with people and tried to explain what happened out there.

And every time I get halfway through, I can see their eyes doing that thing people do when they're being polite.

So let me just start at the beginning and you can do

what you want with it. My name's Ray Holmberg. I'm 53. I spent 26 years with the Marquette County

Sheriff's Department up here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before I pulled the pin on retirement

about two and a half years ago. My wife Joanne passed in 2021.

Cancer. Quick. And after that, the job didn't mean what it used to. I had the pension. I had the

lake cottage. I figured I'd take up fishing more seriously and do some volunteer work to keep

from losing my mind. The volunteer work was through the North Country Trail

Association. The North Country Trail, if you don't know, runs about 4,600 miles from North Dakota

out to Vermont, and a good chunk of it goes right through the Western UP. I took on a sponsor

section through part of the Ottawa National Forest and the

McCormick Wilderness. My job was to walk the trail twice a year, once after snowmelt in

spring, and once in late summer, and log any blowdowns, washouts, eroded stretches, missing

markers, nothing fancy. Some people who do it turn it into a social

thing with their club. I always went alone. Joanne would have come with me. Without her,

I wasn't looking to make small talk with strangers. The McCormick Wilderness is about 16,000

acres of old growth and semi-old growth forest in Baraga County. It was donated to the

Forest Service by the McCormick family back in the 60s. The same McCormick's as the Reaper and

the International Harvester Money. It's some of the last uncut forest in the Great Lakes region. No

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