Out from the forests and farms of half-frozen northern Michigan. Rural country here feels different in its pattern of settlement from out in the Far West. There, outside the cities and the suburban zones, rural settlement generally takes place against a backdrop of true rugged country, alpine or desert, with a few hardscrabble towns here and there. (My friends and I used to play the “population versus altitude game” driving through rural Western towns, each of which sports a road sign listing these two statistics. Altitude usually wins.)
