The streets around Northern Michigan University fill with boot tracks by eight in the morning, and before that, somebody has to make a path. Snow Scholars | Marquette Snow Removal works the neighborhoods where people walk everywhere — plowing drives, shoveling steps and sidewalks, laying salt on the slick stretch between the porch and the car. Marquette measures its winters in feet, and a walk skipped one day becomes a ridge of packed ice the next, so staying ahead of it is most of the trade. A cleared sidewalk on a dark morning is a small piece of kindness with a shovel behind it. That is a decent reason to be up before the streetlights go off.