Retired documentary filmmaker and NMU’s emeritus professor of sociology, Dr. Michael Loukinen, spent his summers growing up in the Upper Peninsula, where the phrase “good man in the woods” carried a lot of weight. A good man in the woods— that is, the forests of the Upper Peninsula— was a man who could be depended on for the arduous and often dangerous jobs that defined life in Northern Michigan before the days of mining (and the days of NMU), and it is the good men of the woods that his 1998 documentary film centers on, and is named after. The film follows loggers, trappers and fishermen— all professions that have largely disappeared from the Upper Peninsula nearly 40 years after the film’s making, but were once synonymous with the region.
In making “Good Man in the Woods” Loukinen found pushback from other Upper Peninsula historians and documentary audiences at large who were confused by the lack of mining history found in the film. Loukinen, however, chose to continue focusing on the men who symbolized a dying age in the Upper Peninsula, even though loggers, trappers and fishers had been the primary industry in the early years of the region. Despite not reaching a national audience in the 1980s, who had little knowledge of Upper Peninsula culture and history, WNMU will air the film on PBS at 9 p.m. on Dec. 6 and 3 p.m. on Dec. 7.
The history of the Upper Peninsula is often obscure to those outside of it and even some of us who live here, but Dr. Loukinen’s films provide a deeper understanding into the place we live and the people who have shaped it, and WNMU is doing its part to make his work more accessible to a new audience. What is a good man in the woods? According to a logger in the documentary, “an individual who knows the land, knows mother nature, knows how to respect the land that’s out there… he respects the animals, the trees, even as small as the flowers, the little brooks, the minnows, the frogs, whatever.” The good men of the woods and Loukinen’s Upper Peninsula may be disappearing from our region, but come to life on film.
WNMU is free to watch for everyone in Marquette.
