CLICK BELOW TO HEAR PETER FRANK SPEAK TO THE UP MEDIA
A 24-year old Escanaba man who’s been paddling against the current around the so-called Great Loop for over a year is back home.
Peter Frank came ashore the Escanaba Municipal Beach Monday at about 9:30 a.m., the same place where he went into the water in a makeshift canoe on June 27, 2024.
He was met by dozens of family members, and fans who watched his journey through Facebook posts over the past 16 months. And Frank, dressed as a pirate and climbing out of that canoe with bare feet and a full beard and shaggy hair, praised God.
“This has taken 16 months,” Frank said, as the Lake Michigan waves splashed behind him. “A full assent from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes took me about two months. It was over 1,000 miles that I paddled against the current. That was among some of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’m thankful to be there. Home is where your heart is. I felt like I was ‘home’ every day I was out there. I went out there to find myself.”
This story actually begins ten years ago, when Frank was a young teenager, hiding inside a leaf pile on an Escanaba neighborhood street. He was run over by a car, who’s driver did not know there was a kid under those freshly-fallen leaves.
That was exactly ten years ago today. October 20, 2015.
“I had shattered my spine,” Frank said, choking back tears. “I was forced to re-learn how to walk. I was put on a lot of restrictions in my life that had robbed a lot of my childhood. I was told there would be many things that I would never be able to do again. In fact, there was a large fear in my family that I would never be able to walk at all due to fear of being paralyzed.”
Frank thanked the Marquette Beacon House for housing his family back then, when he was in the hospital for a month, six weeks in a wheelchair, and six months in a walker. About 18 months of “physically-intensive rehab”. And after all of that, the teenaged Frank did, indeed, walk again. And he was determined to do much, much more.
“Even after that, I struggled with issues,” Frank admitted. “Even to this day, I suffer from chronic back pain. It’s something I struggled with through this entire voyage. But the accident (in 2015) was a lot of inspiration for going out to do this journey because I didn’t want to succumb to victimhood. So, I went out there, and made the best of it.”
This wasn’t his first adventure, either. In 2021, Frank rode across the country and raised $34,000 for the Beacon House. Then in 2022-23, he did more than half of the “Great Loop” across the country, amounting for 4,700 miles in eleven months in a canoe.
And now, the Big One. Sixteen months. All alone on a canoe, albeit with plenty of on-line communication. Still, Frank was on his own out there, and by choice.
“I made clothes for myself,” he said. “There was no branding or sportswear. It was me, in slops, and clothes that had deteriorated off of my body. I preserved my own food.”
One group that did offer help is called “River Angels”. A member of the group, Kathy Woodland, visited Escanaba for the first time in her life on Monday to see with her own eyes Frank reach dry ground after such a grueling journey.
“We’re just people that are interested in the well-being of the paddlers, helping them to get from Point A to Point B safely and in good spirits,” Woodland said. “We connect with the paddlers and provide beverages and food, whatever they need. In Peter’s case, it was 2-by-4’s to help support his broken canoe seat. We’ve traveled a lot of miles, and followed a lot of paddlers. We just provide help when needed, when requested, often not.”
As Frank relished in his victory against himself Monday night, he left one message.
“If there’s anything I want young children to pull from this is this,” Frank said. “One, you can do things for yourself. Two, you can be yourself in this very, very, monotonous world. We lose touch with that because we always feel like we need to play a part of play a role in someone else’s story.”
“A lot of times, people have to fight battles, and a lot of times, those battles aren’t their own. So, I find it to be a beautiful thing to be able to charge into your own battle. A man’s finest moment comes when he lies exhausted on the the field of battle, victorious.”
And as the sun shined on the Escanaba Municipal Beach, Peter Frank, and on everyone who loves him and have grown to respect and admire him, they were all, victorious.
CLICK TO HEAR COMMENTS FROM KATHY WOODWARD, RIVER ANGELS
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