Notes from damn near Canada (for reals)

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada

No. 42
11/09/09
19:40

Airika, the dogs and I spent Halloween in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Beside a lake. Near an abandoned mental institution. Ok, that last part was a lie.

Airika is batshit and loves camping. Me, I enjoy emphatically not camping. Call me crazy, but when I have a few days to kill vacation-style, I enjoy simple things. The beach. Warmth. Pooping indoors. So staying at the Snowshoe Country Lodge way up in the true Damn Near Canada seemed a decent compromise. Except I still had to shit outside and bathe from a bucket. Methinks I was bamboozled.

Snowshoe Country Lodge is about 4.5 hours norther than our place, way up in real moose-and wolf country. We were instructed to keep our speeds down near the camp, because 'moose are not afraid of cars.' Well.


We actually saw no moose, but we did hear wolves off in the distance every now and again.And then there was the frequent wailing of Eddie, the camp malamute (or husky or wolfish-type dog). Nothing like being jerked out of a Friday the 13th nightmare at 3am by an ear-splitting howl just outside your window. Terrifying and mournful, all at once. Like waking up to that creepy girl from The Ring standing at the foot of your bed, singing The Smiths.


Yep. You wanted water, you had to pump it your owndamnself. Vacation!

The trails around the lodge were pristine. More vague gaps between the trees rather than actual trails, it's clear that not a whole helluva lot of people get up to these parts.

Snowshoe Lodge is perfectly situated for either summer, when you can spend the time sunning on the banks of Sand Lake, or deep winter when you can snowshow (dar) or do some cross-country skiing. When we were there, it was just kinda wet. Checking this place out in the dead of winter, when everything is solid white and civilization is likely unattainable would be interesting. Of course, taking a 30-degree dump sucked enough. Take 40 of those degrees away? I might just start shitting in the wood-burning stove.

No running water or indoor terlet, but goddammit, our cabin was handicap-friendly.

Moss and lichen covered everything.

This is where we found all the bodies.


Tired old dogs.

A ton more pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat.

Injun summer after all

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 41
10/27/09
0620

It’s damn near November, which means that while winter hasn’t exactly settled in, it’s standing outside our door holding a suitcase. Last Friday, a Christian Slater-style hard rain resulted in this…

…pretty much out of nowhere. It wasn’t really cold enough for accumulation, but the sheer volume of falling snow stacked up pretty quickly. Which made the drive home from work in my Chevy Toboggan sorta hairy at times. Have I taken precautions against another situation where an impromptu snowstorm makes driving a rear-wheel drive pickup with no weight in the bed a little less dangerous? Of course not. 300 pounds of sand is buried somewheres in my garage.

Anyway. A few days before the Day After Tomorrow slapped us in the face, were granted one last beautiful summer day. I managed to sneak out with my camera and remind myself that no matter how doom-and-gloom I get, I can always step outside and say, “Yeah. This is mine.”

The entirety of Barn Bluff, as shown from the, er, other bluff.

This is taken from the park that basically surrounds my house.

These, too.

The view-from-the-dock shot it kinda overdone, but for good reason. Damn, it’s purty.

And here's some other random shots from the day:

There’s a bunch more pics posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat.
Enjoy these, because I’ll be spending Halloween weekend five hours north in some cabin in the woods. The next pictures you get here might be from the county coroner, and might include my axe-murdered body. Cabin in the middle of nowhere? On a lake? On Halloween? With no place to poop indoors? Yeah. Clearly not MY idea.

Seriously, though, the place looks pretty rad. My goal is to grab a picture of a moose.
http://www.snowshoecountry.com

What. Ever.

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada

No. 40

10/12/09

0750

Three weeks before Halloween and I'm watching a legitimate snowstorm. Good times here in Minnesota.

Nice and happy pics

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 39
10-7-09
17:29

Since so many people gave me the bitchings about what a downer the last post was, here's some shiny happy photographs!


This is partying down in Red Wing.



Hey look, a bug on a flower. HOW CREATIVE I AM.


I do believe this young chap lives under my porch. Since he started showing up and dancing for the camera at PRECISELY 8:26 every night, Tulip the Dog has been trying her damndest to dig through the porch floorboards. This may be a coincidence. Or it may be awesome. Do you have a fox den under YOUR house? HELLS NO, YOU DON'T.


Felty.


Fawny.


Glowy.


This is Cankles the Deer. He has some sort of swollen hoof issue. His rear passenger-side foot is twice the size of his others. When deer have foot problems, their antlers grow asymmetrical.


And finally, a shot of Barn Bluff and the Eisenhower Bridge from Bay Point Park. Really, the Red Wing scenery even makes a hack like me look good.

I'll have a whole bunch of other pics posted soon at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat if I can ever get my goodamn uploader to work.

Sure am glad it's rainin'

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 38
10-5-09
18:45

It’s been pissing rain for two weeks. It literally has not stopped raining for something like 12 days. Even when the sun does poke out, there’s always a dark cloud or two hanging around, ready to drop a few on your windshield, just so you don’t get too comfortable with all that warmth. But for the most part, the sun doesn’t even bother. We’ve had a peculiar wet and grey coupla weeks, a very Ohioesque stretch. It’s been kinda cool. Weeks like these actually make me miss Ohio a little.

But this morning, the rain was hard and cold and depressing. It had an extra bite to it, a subtle reminder that, yeah, this will soon turn to snow. It’s not the threat of winter that has me bummed. It’s the passage of time. Another season down. And what have you done?

When we moved to Minnesota, one of my overarching goals was to slow down. To take breaths now and again, get some things done that needed done not for practical-life purposes but for peace-of-mind, better-yourself purposes. To stop worrying about every goddamn little thing. To slow down, physically and mentally. I was going to do it. I was.

But you can’t slow down. Time won’t allow it. Christmas becomes Easter becomes summer becomes fall becomes Christmas. Every chronological landmark is a reminder of something I’ve meant to do but haven’t. The end of the baseball season reminds me that I haven’t paid my fantasy football fees. The first morning frost reminds me that I haven’t slapped plastic over the two-way wind tunnels acting as windows in my house. The falling leaves whisper that I haven’t mastered photography enough to properly capture them. Every Christmas, another year older, every New Year’s another chance to feel shitty about the three half-written novels on my hard drive.

You’d think that typing this, getting it on record, would be a form of catharsis or at the very least, a way to jumpstart myself. Something that causes me to leap into action.

Nah. I just want to bitch about something.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to watching the rain. This black and dreary day matches my mood, and I want to enjoy it. I’ll get something done another time.

*And I didn't take the photo. Stole it from somewheres.

Hardware the hard way

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada

No. 37

9/23/09

19:47

Here in the Minnesota boonies, you have two options if you need furnace springs or c-clamp batteries. You can visit one of the helpful, privately-owned ACE Hardware stores that are pleasant in theory but likely don’t have what you need, or you go to Menard’s.

Menard’s is the Minny version of Home Depot or Lowe’s. I’m not saying that there aren’t Home Depots or Lowe’s stores available here, but they tend to stay huddled in the warm embrace of the cities. And usually when I need a doorjam pump, it’s an emergency that doesn’t allow me to make the overnight trek to civilization. So I go to a Menard’s, which thrives where no other hardware stores dare to venture.

Menard’s is exactly like your typical Home Depot except for the one fatal difference: They seem to have some sort of hiring policy that strictly prohibits attractive employees of any type. It’s not that they exclusively hire hunchbacks or midgets (although there IS a healthy amount of those freakshows running around). But everyone – EVERYONE – who works there has some sort of singular flaw that is as unexpected as it is creepy. From the back, she might be a cute little blonde checkout girl who fills out her dungarees quite nicely. And then she turns around and springs her harelip on you. Gah! And I didn’t even bring a can to open!

Or the classic little old guy with the toolbelt and overalls. From a distance, he kinda sorta looks like Joe Paterno stacking paint cans. Of course he can hep you. Except you get closer to ask where in the fuck they’ve hidden the blowtorch grommets and OH MY GOD HE’S NOT WEARING AND EYEPATCH BUT MOST CERTAINLY SHOULD BE WEARING AN EYEPATCH. Excuse me, sir, but I didn’t come here to SEE YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL through a hole in your face.

Or the hookhand who acts like there is no hookhand at the end of that pale, blotchy stump and waves it around dangerously close to your fleshy face-bits as he flails in the general direction of the toilet jacks. Thanks, Inspector Gadget, but the first Terminator flick scared the bejaysus out of me and you look like you just escaped from a SkyNet lab. Please get your droid arm away from my hoo-man eyeparts.

Or the customer-service whale with the birthmark shaped like the Lone Ranger's mask.

Or the dude in plumbing who looks like a bridge troll.

Or the actual bridge troll who runs the seasonal section.

Or the otherwise attractive teenage girl rocking the unibrow and full beard. Although I think she’s actually trying to make some sort of statement, because there’s no way to not know that you look like Kristen Bell crossed with Zach Galifianakis. She’s a goddamn Conan O’Brien gag. Sorry, hoss. Keep your style politics out of the workplace. I’m just trying to buy this here hammer jacket and I don’t need to think about complex societal issues such as these.

Menard’s is all the fun of a Home Depot (constantly getting lost, nonsensical organization, youthinkyerbetter’n me redneck contractors at every turn) mixed with the Mos Eisley Cantina and a Halloween Express. But they sell coffee and DVDs, so I guess they’re ok. And you never know when you'll need a chainsaw bubbler like, RIGHT NOW.

This may not end well

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 36
9/20/09
12:43


I guess it was just a matter of time until Pepe LePew started hanging out in the yard. The over/under for time until I have to drown a certain Weimaraner in tomato juice is 2 weeks.