Ruori is the Finnish word for helm. Pronounced roo-oh-ree.
Brennon's great-great-grandparents — the Coponens — knew it as a verb. They left Finland in 1900 and crossed an ocean. They settled on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, in the Keweenaw, where copper mining was the work of the day and the wages were good if you wanted them.
They didn't.
They cleared a piece of ground and farmed it. In a place the size of the Keweenaw, with the winters it has, that decision was a reach. Their neighbors went to work for someone. The Coponens went to work for themselves, and accepted that the boundary of the work would be the boundary of what they could clear, build, and feed.
They took the helm. They didn't ask for one.
A hundred and twenty-five years later, the word is still in the family. The boat is bigger now, and so is the water. But the move is the same one.
Build for bigger water. Take the wheel.