Day Off

Beulah, MI--Arrived yesterday evening after driving from Rochester, NY, through Canada.  To be in Canada as an American, briefly, is to be as though in a dream.  I don't mean anything too pretentious or dramatic by that, just that in dreams the world is recognizable--we can function pretty well, we know our way around, we know what things do--but the details are just different enough for you to know you're not exactly at home, either, and that's what happens in Canada.  Signs are in French as well as English, even though you didn't take some long trip over the ocean (that, of course, is the other thing--it only happens during car trips, because you expect things to be different after a plane ride).  The half & half with which you are provided for your coffee is labeled "10%" because of course that's how much milk fat is in half & half.  "Stony" is spelled "Stoney".  The speed limit is called "Maximum" and is measured in kilometers per hour.  All these examples are obvious, of course, and not even that weird necessarily, and someone who had never been to Canada could probably imagine more.  There are places in the United States, I'm sure, in which this effect is even greater, and in fact I feel the same way in the South as I do in Canada (at least in terms of dream-like subtleties).  But the point is that it's a nice start to the trip, which of course will be a radical departure from the daily life I've known for so long.

[Later the same day.]

In a coffee shop in Beulah eating a mocha chip muffin and doing Internet things because the house at which we're staying only has dial-up.  Went kayaking in Crystal Lake this afternoon, which besides being a lot of fun was helpful, because the water was very pleasant and so we could practice falling in and getting back on the kayaks.  Unfortunately, my skin is now quite dry and consequently very itchy--not the itch of a bug bite but the itch you just cannot satisfy and which roams all over, while a bug bite, however annoying, is in a predictable and consistent location.  I smell like lake.  The itchiness is also such that contemplation is all but impossible; my span of attention, normally such a source of pride and boon to my thinking and writing facilities, is currently running at about two seconds long.  I must find some moisturizer.

From the cafe we move to the library and then back to the house, and we leave for Minneapolis real early Sunday morning, taking a ferry across Lake Michigan.  Internet should be consistent there, so I'll update whenever I can.