For two months in the spring of 2024, I returned to northern Wisconsin to help my parents build what my father would jokingly call  "their final home".  While we had initially intended to begin right away, the Northwoods winters had other plans.  For the first 4 weeks, we waited for mother nature to release her frozen grip.  During this time, I had the chance to reconnect with a place that I haven't lived in since I was a child.

 "Up North" is what anyone who lives south of Highway 8 would call it.  It's the vast, rugged, and sparsely populated northernmost region of Wisconsin where life runs a bit slower and continues to be a place where people escape the modern world and immerse themselves in uncorrupted natural beauty.  It's a place who's identity is defined by the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of the natural world.

We broke ground on May 1st, 2024.  By the first week of June, the house was "dried in", a term used to signify that the initial phase of construction had been completed.  During the 20 days of construction, our "crew" consisted of me, my father, and my mother.