“I got nothin’! I. Got. Nothin’!”

I repeat this self-doubting mantra while pacing to and frantic around the big empty space that appears between my ears whenever I have a column, blog, or grocery list to write. Not this week however. This week I binged on the muse and had three subjects from which to choose. I sat at the computer eeny meeny miny moeing my ideas when unexpectedly, without a hint of internal debate, I laid aside my ideas and set my keyboard on a course north.

The Sunday, June 27, Washington Post featured a story by Nancy Trejos in its monthlong series on Natural Historic Preservation’s Distinctive Destinations for 2010. Wow! That is a mouthful.

Publisher Scott Schmeltzer and I call this distinctive destination Marquette, unless our mouths are full of pasty; then it’s easier to just call it “home.”

So here I am, a resident of St. Paul, vacationing at my parents’ house in Elk Rapids, Mich., writing about Marquette, Mich., for an Albert Lea paper. Why? Because one of my topics for this week was, “You can go home again,” but after reading Ms. Trejos article, I realized that I wasn’t home. Home is where the stories are, the ghosts are, and most importantly where the pasties are.

Marquette is the Queen City of the Upper Peninsula with approximately 20,000 people in her court. I admit I’m a transplant. I was five when we moved from East Lansing to Marquette, and even though I was only halfway to double digits, I remember my first impression being, That’s the mall? The Marquette of 1976 was not the town Ms. Tejos describes in her article: the artistic, eclectic, historically preserved haven for proud “Yoopers” and curious tourists. It was just a place we moved to where I was going to live — for the next 22 years. All kinds of living, I did. Some listed below; some not.

I know it’s the writer’s cardinal sin to censor herself for fear of what her audience might think, but my dad is in that audience. I think Henry Miller himself would say, “Honey, I absolve you. What are you doing later tonight?”

Home is where curiosity and innocence lives. Saturdays were at the roller rink. Monday mornings were sitting on the edge of the couch in moon boots, backpack attached, waiting until the last minute to run for the bus in case there was a snow day and there usually was. Sundays after Mass at St. Pete’s were buck-25 matinees at the Delft Theater and Wednesdays were waiting for the Mining Journal to see what forbidden movie was showing at the Evergreen Drive-In. (Of course, we could never go, but the titles and the ads were enough to make us wonder …) Friday nights were games at Hurley Field, Lakeview Arena, or Hedgecock Fieldhouse. The Superior Dome: the world’s largest was only a twinkle in a forest’s eye.

Home is where you passed long winters: safety optional. We jumped off decks into the snow until we wore the powder to the ground and it felt like belly flopping on ice floes. We slicked the bottoms of our “saucers” and turned sledding into bareback bronco riding. And then there was shacking: You squat, grab the back of a car, and hang on. If you saw a car with gloves frozen to the bumper, no hands attached, you knew shacking had taken another victim.

Home is where your firsts live. First beer? The shores of Lake Superior. First kiss? The shores of Lake Superior. First time the police chased us away for playing loud music? The shores of Lake Superior. The first time skipping class or sneaking out of the house? Destination: the shores of Lake Superior. I think I’ve established, that while it is one of the most majestic bodies of water in the world, Lake Superior is a really bad influence.

I am lucky to have been a child of the Upper Peninsula, where just living is an extreme sport. I love every weird inch of it. Whether the place they love is Albert Lea or New York City, I wish all kids could love where they come from.

Not everyone has a bond with a place that cannot be broken by time or absence. I hope you have that. Not everyone was set down in the middle of a natural miracle and told, “Go play.” I hope you were. Not everyone can say with absolute certainty where she would go if life’s givens were snatched away tomorrow, but I do, and I hope you do too. I’d go home because, and I know I’ll spend a thousand years in purgatory shucking corn for writing this; home is where my heart is.

St. Paul resident Alexandra Kloster appears every other Friday. She may be reached at alikloster@yahoo.com and her blog is Radishes at Dawn at alexandrakloster.com.