JOHN PEPIN

“In the misty moonlight, by the flickering firelight, any place is alright as long as I’m with you,” — Cindy Walker

It’s a strange and usually complicated occurrence when someone goes missing, especially when the circumstances cannot be easily explained.

In most disappearance cases, police say the missing return safely within a few hours. In these circumstances, there can often be a simple miscommunication or misunderstanding at the root of the incident.

Setting aside those serious and unfortunate cases where foul play is suspected, the instances where people seem to vanish from the face of the earth or clues are discovered that lead only to questions most intrigue me.

I am especially interested in cases when people perish or disappear while in the woods while outdoors enjoying recreational pursuits. I immediately feel a connection to those individuals because I like to spend a lot of my time in the woods too – often alone.

Those cases make me wonder exactly what happened to those people, what might they have been thinking, what choices did they have, what were they feeling, what challenges did they face and what mistakes might they have made?

Over the past week or so, I have been involved in researching and writing about a cold case where a Wisconsin man disappeared presumably at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in April 1968.

The case remains the only unresolved missing persons incident at the park.

A full account of this story appears in this week’s Showcasing the DNR feature story series available online at www.Michigan.gov/DNRStories.

Michael Larson, 19, was a second-year student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It was the first day back to school for students returning from Easter break.

At about 10:30 a.m. that Monday, Michael told his mother he was going out to get his hair cut. It was the last time she would ever see him.

Michael left in his green, 1962 Volkswagen sedan, wearing green trousers and a black sweatshirt. Investigators would later determine he had also taken a poncho and a map of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

He had withdrawn $650 from his savings account at the Lake City Bank, leaving a balance of just over $40.

Two days after Michael left his parents’ home, a Michigan Department of Conservation officer discovered a vehicle parked on a remote side road, at a gravel pit off the South Boundary Road in the Porcupine Mountains.

The place where the car was found is about 2 miles from Highway 107, which is the eastern gateway to the roughly 60,000-acre park known for its numerous hiking trails, remote atmosphere, superb vistas and storied hemlock and hardwood forests.

The door to the abandoned vehicle was unlocked, the keys were in the ignition and the gas tank was full.

Police said the V-21221-tagged Wisconsin license plates from the car were missing and there were small drops of blood found on the front seat cushions in the car’s interior.

There were no signs of the driver.

The sheriff speculated that whoever removed the license plates from the vehicle might have cut their hand, resulting in the finding of blood. It appeared to him that the car had been abandoned.

Despite efforts to search the area, no trace of Michael was discovered that spring.

It turned out Michael had a prior connection to the park. At roughly the same time of year, while he and his brother, Tom, were still in high school, they came to the Porcupine Mountains to hike and stay in cabins while on spring break.

The three boys encountered hip-deep snow but made it to cabins they stayed in at Lake of the Clouds, Mirror Lake and the Buckshot Cabin, which is located along the Lake Superior shoreline.

No one knows why Michael presumably came to the park in April 1968, but his car was there. Two of his brothers would later speculate that he came to the area to commit suicide, but that’s a suggestion Tom discounts.

Other speculation postulates that Michael headed to the Upper Peninsula while on his way to Canada to avoid the draft, another suggestion Tom said didn’t make sense.

Michael had visited the park before in early springtime and knew firsthand the difficult conditions that exist. So, if he planned to come to the park to hike or stay in a cabin, why did he only bring a poncho and a map?

Tom wondered whether the car being abandoned with the keys inside and a full tank of gas meant that Michael had wanted the car to be returned to his family. If that was the case, why did he presumably remove and discard the license plates?

No clues emerged in the first several months following the finding of Michael’s car.

The sheriff urged hunters to be on the lookout for any evidence of Michael as the November firearm deer-hunting season of 1968 was set to begin.

Two days into the effort, a hunter from the Detroit area was in the Porcupine Mountains hunting a couple hundred yards from the rim of Lake Superior, about a mile east of the Buckshot Cabin.

He saw something ahead of him in the distance, protruding from a cover of about 2 inches of freshly fallen snow. It looked like a boot laying on its side with a long branch sticking out of it.

It was a human leg bone rather than a branch sticking out of the boot. The foot was still attached. A search by police and park officials found the match to the boot 50 feet from the first.

They also found several pieces of bone that had been chewed on, likely by a black bear. The bones were sent to the State Crime Laboratory in Lansing in hopes of determining sex, age, height, weight and other details.

In January 1969, the sheriff said a study of the human remains by the University of Michigan Science Department determined that they were those of a white male over 17 years of age. The university said there was insufficient bone material to determine the height or weight of the unknown individual.

In February 1969, a campsite was discovered by accident in a remote section of the Porcupine Mountains, about 10 miles from the place where the human remains had been discovered three months earlier.

Speculation that the abandoned campsite might have belonged to Michael Larson was apparently dashed in October 1969 when the Ironwood Daily Globe reported that a man named John Corser of Land O’Lakes, Wis. claimed the gear as his.

The newspaper said the campsite “contained a canoe, tent and a supply of canned goods that had been wrapped in plastic bags and hung from trees.”

Corser, who camped and stayed in cabins at the park on numerous occasions, was reportedly “unable to explain why he waited so long” to claim the items.

Over the subsequent roughly half-century, no additional clues have been discovered in the disappearance of Michael Larson. Tom Larson remains vigilant on behalf of his family in trying to determine conclusively what happened to his older brother.

In recent months, police have searched the area with cadaver dogs and Tom Larson has visited the park, conducted more research into his brother’s disappearance and interviewed Mr. Corser about his camp in the woods.

All these efforts, including internal police and university searches for the bones recovered in 1969 have so far proved fruitless.

The Larson family hopes hunters in the woods this firearm deer season, especially in that area about a mile east of the Buckshot Cabin, will keep their eyes open for old bones or any metallic items that may still be out there somewhere undetected.

The old license plates may still be in the woods at or near the gravel pit.

Park staff think it is unlikely that the bones discovered more than 50 years ago, and Michael’s disappearance are not connected.

Still, countless questions remain as to what happened exactly.

For me, it is those same old things that are usually on my mind. I wish I knew what Michael intended. It has been so long, but the mystery still haunts those woods.

I think about how the trees that were there when he disappeared are still growing in the same places and that the rocks haven’t moved, nor have the creeks he may have stepped across or the hillside knolls he might have rested upon.

They know what happened.

I suppose it could all have been a ruse to throw off those who might look for him, but then where would he go and how would he get there? It’s unlikely.

I think one thing that can be said with certainty is that the deep forests and beautiful scenery of the Porcupine Mountains captivated Michael Larson.

Wherever he was at in his head and heart, body and soul, or however he ended up, he was beckoned to the Porcupine Mountains, likely by the memories made with his brother, Tom, and a high school buddy during that snowy trip a few years prior.

That part is easy for me to understand.

The beautiful and wondrous forests, hills and waterways of this rugged and ancient landscape grab hold of a person, and if that person is perceptive and predisposed to the attractions of wilderness – they don’t ever let go.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.