Another Far too Short Trip North: Night One

Well, it has taken me a couple of weeks to start typing up my account of being up north, but then again it normally does take me that long. It is hard being away from that place, and sharing with you what I experience up there makes me miss it anew. The following is the account of my first night of my much too short up north adventure. The rest of the weekend’s accounts will follow in the next few days. I took all of the pictures within the posts while I was there.

7-9-10 Night one of my much too short up north adventure It’s strange to me how normal it was pulling up here after three months absent…strange because of how normal it was. Yes I’ve been coming here for twenty years, but only regularly for the last two, and even that is four times a year max. But none-the-less when I pulled up here today I felt like I was HOME, home in a way that I never felt in the house I was raised in, home like I’ve never felt anywhere. This place is where my heart resides (if only my body could catch up to it more often). Isn’t that really what we are all trying to do anyhow? Catch our hearts wherever they have run to? Who holds yours? Is it a woman? A man? A memory of a person that no longer exists due to death—or the changes of life that catch us all off guard sometimes? Is it a city? A pet? A smell—perhaps of lilacs—or of opine brushing between your fingers? For me it is the north—the lakes dark with musky and mysteries they refuse to reveal. The thick snow that keeps even capitalism at bay, the haunting cry of the loon (the north’s very own penguin) mating for life and in peril just the same as their southern counterparts. It’s the white birch, the Indian paintbrush, the otter, the deer, they hold my heart hostage and I must be reunited every few months or I start to slip away—often in very measurable ways. For what is a body without its heart? Heart in the love sense, not the physical. I start to show actual signs of depression, I stop running, sleep during the day and rarely t night, my diet goes to hell, and I STOP WRITING.

It is good that I got back here in time—I was slipping so far and fast I might have totally forgotten that this is what I needed.
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Later: I just started a fire to keep the mosquitoes away! I’m so glad I got my parents a fire ring for Christmas. I walked down to the pier to grab my book and notebook and saw a loon, the first one of the year for me up here, not twenty feet from me. He or she was stretching its leg behind it, looking right at me. It felt like I was being waved at. I wonder if it could remember me. I have always felt a strange affinity with loons, and they return to the same lakes each year, so perhaps it was a greeting, from one old friend to another.

I just saw a family of young mergansers and their mother. I got some great pictures. I might have to go inside soon, even the smoke from the fire isn’t keeping the mosquitoes at bay. My constant runs to grab more wood probably aren’t helping either!

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I just witnessed one of the most serene things of my life: a pair of loons came into the bay and proceeded to preen themselves—stretching their wings, cleaning their stomachs, etc and then one of them tucked its head into its feathers and fell asleep! Then the other followed and I watched for over half an hour as they both sat low in the water sleeping! Finally one woke up, yawned and then the other did too. I got video of them sleeping that I’ll try to upload one of these days. Now they are still swimming in front of the pier.