After a beautiful day of picking blueberries on the Yellow Dog Plains, in the Upper Peninsula, my friends and I decided to check out the Rio Tinto Eagle Mine site, a couple of miles away. We had been hearing heavy equipment all day, as well as logging trucks running back and forth where the company wants to build a haul road. After picking about 9 gallons (the area is one of the best blueberry-picking spots in the region), we took a drive over.
As you can see in this video (sorry for the low quality), mine security really does tail people on the county road and, apparently, parking on the road and walking in a bit to see what’s happening on our public land appears to warrant harassment and threats of trespassing charges. How times are changing in the Upper Peninsula I grew up in. . .
This post was written by
Gabriel Caplett – who has written 106 posts on Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes.
Gabriel Caplett is a writer and market farmer from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
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No longer will we experience the glorious wilderness with the quiet that we love! The whispers of Fred Rydholm, Christ Anderson, Nels Anderson, and our Native brothers and sisters as well as the many other pioneers who loved our beloved Yellow Dog will console us! It’s all about greed and the almighty dollar! The Kennecott guards will not keep us from the land we love !!! Nancy Haun
Well, whatever made you believe that a corporation bent on getting its operation up and running would do otherwise?
Wanna bet that the percentage of individuals sitting on the board of directors, the vast majority of stockholders (if this is a public-offered company…I don’t know and will not bother wasting my time searching ‘their’ profile), have never experienced a day of blueberry picking anywhere, muchless the adventure of wild berry picking…I don’t know whether to feel sorry for their ignorance or just continue to wait for the day when they see the need for food and find none on the store shelf or at the boarded-up fast food joint. As I go back outside and pick my dinner salad from the ‘lawn’ surrounding this home…free, no chemicals, loaded with nutrients, and requiring only a good washing to remove any traces of the overnight visitors. Danged I wish the pair of fawns who stood and listened to me talk to them this morning would stop walking on my salad greens!
I was in the same area over the summer and I had the same experience of being tailed on that road, even thought I was just driving to try to find Pinnacle Falls. It is unfortunate that people who travel from such faraway places to enjoy what is left of the untouched UP have to have an experience like this in the middle of nowhere!