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MARQUETTE - Margaret Comfort of Kankakee, Ill., is spending her two-week summer vacation walking from Eagle Rock on the Yellow Dog Plains to the Mackinac Bridge to highlight her opposition to a nickel and copper mine planned on the plains.

"It was something that came to me at night in bed," she said. "I said this is something I can do to honor this beautiful place that I love and I can educate people about it."

Comfort, 49, started walking Monday from Eagle Rock - near the place where the mine is planned - to Big Bay and then to Marquette, where she stayed at the Tourist Park Wednesday evening. She plans to walk more than 200 miles across the Upper Peninsula to make it to the annual Labor Day bridge walk on the Mackinac Bridge.

"It's representing many folks who have been working on this for years," she said.

Local environmental groups Save the Wild U.P., Northwoods Wilderness Recovery, Keepers of the Water and Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve are supporting Comfort in her quest.

Comfort said she fell in love with the Marquette area when she came up here to study at Northern Michigan University in 2000.

"I traveled a lot all over the U.S. and this is the most beautiful place on Earth," Comfort said. "The total quiet shocked me."

Upon finishing school, Comfort took a job as an oncology physician near Chicago, but she never lost touch with her U.P. friends.

"My friend called me up and told me about the mine," she said. "It's craziness."

Comfort said walking from Eagle Rock to the bridge is one thing she can do to help fight the planned mine and other mines in the Great Lakes region.

"This is a Great Lakes problem," she said, adding that mining industries are currently looking to put a mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. She said protecting the water of the Great Lakes region is crucial. "People are already running out of water in various places ... and where are they going to turn? Here," she said.

Comfort is walking through Marquette today along M-28 to the art park Lakenenland. She then plans to pass through Munising, Seney, Germfask and Naubinway, then continuing along U.S. 2 to St. Ignace.

Several groups are organizing rallies along the route. For more information, to support Comfort's quest or for a route map, contact Save the Wild U.P. at 228-4444 or through its Web site at Savethewildup.org