Looking Out: Defining 'Up North' depends on one's perspective

“We’re heading Up North for a vacation,” says my friend Burt.

“How long will you be gone?” I ask.

“A week or so,” he says.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Up North. Camping,” he says.

“Where up north?” I ask.

“Up North,” he answers.

I let it go at that. It would be interesting to ask 1,000 Michiganders to each stick a pin in a map showing where their own Up North is located. Serious deer hunters often claim that if one doesn’t cross over The Bridge into St. Ignace, one is not up north. Others consider anything north of Clare as up north.

It has been rumored that people from Indiana consider New Buffalo to be up north. My late parents used to spend three months in a leased condo in St. Augustine, where they claimed rental rates were low in the winter because southern Floridians consider it an Up North summer resort area.

When people ask me where I grew up, I often reply that I was raised in the Deep South. My hometown of Morenci, Michigan, is the southernmost town in the state, and as far as I’m concerned is plenty far enough south. To Morenci natives, everywhere else in Michigan is technically Up North, but I’m a reasonable man — sometimes — and ascribe to the north-of-Clare definition.

My lifelong friend Rooster Croft has always loved going Out West. His family made some trips Out West when he was a kid, and he’s been back with his own family.

“Rooster, where is Out West?” I asked him last time I saw him.

“Grand Tetons,” he said, immediately.

My beloved wife Marsha’s sister and her husband live in Long Beach, California, which is nearly as far west as one can get in the continental United States, although it is still 300 miles east of Cape Alava, Washington.

“Where did you grow up,” I ask Tricia.

“Out East,” she says.

There we go again. That covers a lot of territory.

There’s a great old riddle: "Which states are the easternmost, westernmost, southernmost and northernmost in the United States?”

It is amazing how many people get it wrong. Some think Texas or Florida are the southernmost, forgetting Hawaii, way out there. Then they say Maine is easternmost, which is a trick answer. Hawaii is many people’s choice for westernmost. Northernmost? Alaska, of course, but Minnesota often comes up if people are thinking Continental U.S.

The truth contains that trick answer. Southernmost is in fact Hawaii. Easternmost, westernmost and northernmost are all Alaska.

What? Easternmost? Alaska?

It turns out that the tip of the Aleutian Islands, Amatignak Island, is on the Eastern Hemisphere side of Longitude 180 degres, making it technically the farthest east point in the United States.

Perhaps a more rational answer is West Quoddy Head, Maine, since tourism on Amatignak Island (“Amatignak” is Aleutian for “Free Cable TV and Air Conditioning”) probably amounts to one person every 17 years.

That kind of stuff fascinates me. As a child, I often studied my grandmother’s globe, trying to figure out geography. It always amazed me, for example, that London, England, is as far north as the southern tip of Hudson Bay, Ontario. Hudson Bay is 650 miles north of Morenci. Gee whiz! No wonder all those men in British TV shows and movies always wear jackets. It does not, however, explain why they or anyone wear neckties.

The number of American men who wear neckties while Up North, wherever that is, equals the tourism on Amatignak Island.

Jim Whitehouse lives in Albion.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Jim Whitehouse: Defining 'Up North' depends on one's perspective