From Michigan
Port Oneida
The pilgrimage to Mecca. This is where all the dust piled into my mind's corners, on top of memories and feelings is gently blown and wiped away. Rounding a corner I know that it is the crossroads to the Leelanau school. Though I don't recognize it, like a million places here, I have been there many times before. I see everything here with my mind as much as with my eyes. I know that I've been through these streets and down these paths. I could navigate them with my eyes closed... but were I to open them and really LOOK, I would be lost in a minute.

We drove up the highway and into Glen Arbor and Port Oneida, where the cottage used to be before they tore it down. I'm surprised at how little the landscape has changed. They're putting up so many houses and there are a few more stores that I remember but there's so much space left. Everything is done in such an un-obstrusive way that you'd hardly notice the difference. No one is trying to be bigger, better, out here. No one is trying to scar the landscape with their newest business venture because they can. If they are, someone's done a damn good job at stopping them.

As we drove, I watched the farms and farmhouses fly by; a fruit stand here, a market there. Honest people in an honest city. A good share of tourist shmuck, but a clean way to make money. None of that big business crap here. No heart attacks over buying and selling stock, crazy internet ventures, over-caffienated triple mochas. They leave it to the West-coasters to sell out and die young.Here they'd much rather eat a nice, big steak; take a swim; and watch the sun set. Here they care more about their neighbors than their job. Here they know the shop clerks by name. Here small businesses haven't been smothered by the local supermall. Here, downtown is small and traffic is a joke.

Yes, I'm probably deluded. I know no area can be that pastoral. But I grew up here. Though I can't hear it, I still speak with the accent. What am I supposed to think? I always wanted to live here. I told myself, even when I knew I was moving away, that someday I would have a house up in northern Michigan with a view of the lake. I was in love with this area. I loved everything about it. Now I love the mountains and the sea and I tell myself that someday I will have a house in the San Juan Islands; a quiet little nook in which to watch the whales and breathe the rains. A place to be alone and a place to write. Yesterday, as we were driving, I realized that I never fell OUT of love with this landscape, that it still lives in my pulse and still draws me the way that it used to. There are no mountains here: there are huge cumulonimbus clouds that loom on the horizon, threaten rain and snow, and assume bizarre forms from the corner of your eye. There are no mountains, there are only hills. There is no sea, there is only lake. But it does not mean anything on a less grand scale; it is a different scale entirely. Here is not solitude, adventure, and freedom. Here is comfort, family, and friends. Here is not for the modern woman writer and her wanderlust. Here is for the future mother and her children. Here is Home.

They don't have forest like this out West. This is the Deep Forest, lined with fern and pine needles; nesting ground for deer and wolverine. This forest changes with the seasons, bright orange to bare. And in the winter the wind whistles through the pristine rows of evergreens, piling snow in deep drifts around the trees, howling at front doors and shaking shingles- kept only at bay by thick layers of down and a warm, roaring fire. This is the forest of my mind, the forest I walk in Quest. The West is wilder, it is freer, it is my liberation but this, this I recognize, I understand. It doesn't thrill me, but I *know* it. I know it with my eyes closed.

There are cicadas in the day, crickets in the night. The rain falls heavy on the hills and in the valleys. The trees sing. The beaches don't smell of fish and salt; they smell only of sand... a scent I didn't realize I knew.

The place I would bring my children is gone. The Park Service repossessed the property on past contract the year after my family moved. It was only a cottage and the land still lives, but I can never be there any more. The lot is empty, bulldozed and covered with the down of new grass. Pieces of the cottage are scattered in the dirt: a shingle, tile, glass, brick. I put memories in a small bag. I took a brick for Gran's yard. She clipped evergreens and sweetpeas to remind her. They pulled out the steps. Seventy-six of them down to the beach. Now, the path is treacherous and neither Gran nor Grandpa can walk it and I knew they wouldn't want to wait for me to take the walk I wanted, so we went together back to the car and left. Now, I'm sad that I didn't run into the woods, that I didn't hunt for secret paths along the beach and check to see if all the old fallen logs are still there. But I can walk every inch of that beach in my head. I wonder if my stream still runs.

The lot is empty but we found the house. It's the first time anyone's seen it since it was torn out of the end of Port Oneida road. It was moved into a gravel pit just east of Glen Arbor where it sits with several other repossessed homes. We drove to see it. I didn't recognize it and first. It looked pathetic, dingy white, desolate and smaller than I remember it. Of course, it is smaller, the downstairs, sitting room, and fireplace have been ripped off of it. But it's mostly intact. There's no laughter and skinned knees here any more, no grasshoppers and Wolf spiders. I couldn't track sand inside. I couldn't even pry open the doors. But I climbed up onto the flatbed and, sure enough, it was the same old house. We took pictures of it, around it; found the street number and pointed. Grandpa took out his pen and lined the address in black. I wrote my name and a message on the underside of the foundation, "Kat Ortland, 2002, my house! love always." They don't know if they're going to buy the house back and find some property for it or leave it with its new owner until he resurrects or kills it. For now it will lie there, comatose and dirty. I don't think I'll hear that screen door slam again.

We had lunch in Glen Arbor and I poked my nose into some of the old holes. Tiny Treasures, the Totem Shop... places that we had to go to at least once a trip when we were kids, for treats and souvenirs. Now I just find them annoying. Drove by the Sleeping Bear dunes next, now a Day Use fee area. The government really loves to milk the money out of memory. We didn't go in even though they said they would wait while I tried a quick climb. I might go back tomorrow with Lesley and hike the dunes to the water. We have dunes near where I live, on the coast in Florence. They might even be bigger, in places. But some part of me doubts it. These dunes will always reign in my head. I got more sand in my ears here than anywhere else. This family lost their first cottage to the dunes after the coastline eroded and the cottage nearly fell 100 meters down into the lake.

We sat up late and watched old home movies. Color, but with no sound. They jumped amusingly between time periods. There was my mother at five, fifteen, three, and eight. It was Christmas, then easter the year before and then summer ten years later. I could watch these movies forever. Gran gave me wine and Frangelico, just for fun, and we sipped as she ran commentary. A rather amusing moment in the kitchen ensued when she tried to break out a small airplane sized bottle of Baileys that was about ten years old.

Me: Hmmmmm.... *eyes bottle, shakes it, notes that contents inside are SOLID* huuuummm... *shakes it vigorously with no effect* I'm pretty sure these have expiration dates
Gran: No they don't, honey, they're alcoholic, give me that... *takes the bottle, looks at it*
Me: Yes, they're an alcoholic MILK product and I know for a fact that they expire because Justin had a huge jug of it that we were going to acquire when he moved that was a few years old and past date. It had one stamped on it and it was going bad
Gran: Well, I think we'll just give this a try *sticks the uncapped bottle in the microwave*
Me: Um. That's SOLID.
*microwave goes for about ten seconds. We hear a brief sizzle and then a huge POP sound*
Me: Uh- Oh....
Gran: That was just it defrosting.
Me: Defrosting?!?! *opens microwave* Oh. God. Eeeeewww...
At this point, the alcohol trapped beneath the solid curdled milk in the minature bottle had superheated and tried to boil using what air it could. It pressurized the cream and as the temperature rose, forced the air upwards again, blowing CHUNKS out of the bottle. There was a lovely, sticky-brown, chunky star shaped splatter right above the bottle. And chunks elsewhere around the microwave.
Gran: Here, dear. *wipes out the microwave, hands me the scalding bottle of baileys, still solid and now steaming with a rather FRUITY stench*
Me: *doubled over in laughter* Oh, eeww... *shaking baileys* It's CHUNKY.... *laughing hard* And eew, it SMELLS. *hands it back to her as she finishes with the rag*
Gran: *smells it* Smells good to me!
Me: *realizing that Gran knows nothing of what Baileys is SUPPOSED to be like* That's not what it's supposed to smell like. (it didn't smell bad, and definitely... fermented... but NOTHING like Baileys)
Gran: Oh. Well. Maybe I can cook with it.
Me: (aghast) Um. It's FERMENTED milk. And, anyway... you can't get it out of the bottle.
Gran: Oh. Okay. *puts the bottle back on the tray with the other liquers and gets ready to put it away*
Me: Ew. Give me that! *takes it, throws it away*

Man alive. You think that somebody from the cocktail generation would recognize a volatile drink when they saw one. Ugh!

So, anyway, I'm meeting up with Lesley tomorrow (maybe?) for a hike. I will, at least, be seeing her on the ride back downstate. I have to admit, I'm pretty apprehensive about seeing her. She was my best friend for several years but we've grown apart as we've grown up. Now all we really share is memories. It'd be nice to build something new but I don't know if we're compatible any more. It's also stressful to have to plan all these meetings, etc with someone I don't really know all that well. I'd rather be on her turf than risk making her uncomfortable at my expense. What if we have nothing to say? I don't know why, but I don't feel nearly as insecure about seeing Sian. Maybe it's because she's going away to Japan on Monday and if I mess up, I don't really have to worry about it. I shouldn't really worry with Les either.

The relaxing portion of my trip is coming to an end. The rest will be more intense and equally valuable, but I'll miss the quiet days up here on the lake- and my more liberal grandparents (Err... Grandmother, Grandpa likes Bush and listens to Limbaugh x-p). I never realized how much my two sets of grandparents dislike each other. It's almost a family feud but more a quiet, beneath-the-surface thing. I think everyone finds it hard to like Oma and she finds it hard to like anyone else because she has to be RIGHT. Well, she means well. I think. I hope she just doesn't get on my case about... oh... any number of things. (Lessee... eating right, boyfriend, religion, sex, school, parents, friends....etc etc) Actually, to tell the truth, I look forward to her getting on my case because nothing she can say will faze me. I just don't want my response to come down on someone else's head. She can't paddle me no more!

Well, I do believe I've completed my brain-dump successfully and will now reward myself with some time with Tolkein in the sun. Oh, and later going to town to get Gran a latte. She's never had one before! Muahahaha! Will my corruptions never end!?!?!