In the spring of 2022, I ticked an item off my bucket list: taking a circle tour around Lake Superior. I started my trip in Houghton, Michigan, and drove westward in a clockwise circle around Lake Superior—the wildest, most remote of the Great Lakes.

First up: Bayfield, Wisconsin, where I was in for a remarkable, and wholly unexpected, encounter.

On the way, I made a pitstop in Ashland, the biggest town on US 2 over a nearly 300-mile stretch from Escanaba, Michigan until Duluth, Minnesota. I stocked up on some supplies at the Chequamegon Food Co-op, including the ever-important local beer discovery in the form of the AOC IPA from the Minocqua Brewing Company. Since I was staying off-grid, I picked up a few less exciting essentials, like powdered soy milk, instant coffee, and cereal that tasted of dust.

On arrival in Bayfield, I parked in a sandy lot at the bottom of a wooded hill outside town. At the top: a yurt in a wildlife preserve maintained by the county. The reviews I had read were some of the most consistent I’ve ever seen on Airbnb: the hike up is rough, but the view at the top makes it totally worth it.

I was pretty excited, but also a little nervous. I had stayed in off-grid cabins and the like before, but this was taking things to the next level. I had never hiked in to a site before. As for the off-grid cabins I had experienced, while they lacked some combination of cell service, internet connection, and flushing toilets, they still had electricity and non-potable water for dishes.

So, with my newly acquired lantern, AOC beer, bedding, banjo, and dust puff cereal, I made the half-mile trek up into the hills over Lake Superior. As my fellow travelers had promised, the view from the top was spectacular, and the solitude astounding. I crossed paths with a few mountain bikers, but at the top, I was quite alone.

I dutifully set out to test my fire-building skills as the sun crawled its way down the opposite side of the hill I had just climbed. Fire built and beer cracked, I savored the evening’s golden glow, happily munching on tuna and crackers.

Then, for a second, I thought the spell was broken. That my sense of being there alone in nature had just been some illusion. A dog appeared out of nowhere on the other side of the fire—from a nearby hiking trail or the other yurt on the hillside? But it wasn’t a dog. It was a fox.

I was a bit shocked to see a fox in broad daylight, and so close. The only times I had seen foxes in the wild before were on roadsides late at night while I was driving. And here I found one sitting directly in front of me, just 20 feet away.

Some encounters are best captured in video rather than words. And this was one of them. Please be warned, I use a sparing amount of adult language to describe my excitement, which I hope you’ll forgive.