Marquette, MI: nearest Fitzlabs City: Duluth, MN: Duluth's climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate near Oregon, Ohio. The typical winter in Oregon, Ohio is 13.9°F (7.7°C) warmer and 122.5% wetter than winter in Duluth.
Marquette is is a gem-like college town on the shore of Lake Superior. It has a lively downtown full of shops, waterfront with walking paths, and many, many roundabouts. Although the geography is different, Marquette reminds me a lot of Lawrence, KS.
I’ve got a reservation at “Tourist Park”, a campground run by the City of Marquette along the banks of Dead River. It’s fine; like the rest of the Upper Peninsula, it’s full of families and groups of young adults on vacation.
Although it’s the perfect little college town, something about the sameness of everything gives me a set-apart feeling. All the original independent little shops seem just like all other little independent shops in every other little college town. It’s not a criticism; it’s just a realization that it’s not my scene. They’re not exactly the same—my lack of interest in them blocks me from appreciating them the way someone else might; the way all the other people on the sidewalk are.
Poor boys and pilgrims with families
And we are going to Graceland
- Paul Simon, Graceland
The thing that’s good about Marquette for me is that I finally do some of the things that I’d been hoping to do on this trip. Cook over a fire; go for a hike.
Liesl is so good in this campground. She doesn’t bark excessively, and she stays quiet in the tent when I need to trek to the bathroom. I try to get her interested in sitting next to the fire with me, but she is restless and prefers to return to the comfort of the mattress in the tent. I don’t entirely blame her; the mosquitos are fierce and I am glad I brought the pet-friendly bug spray for her, though I can’t really tell if it’s working.
After two nights, though, I am eager to be on our way, and begin heading west over state highways through the trees and little towns. At some point we cross over into Wisconsin and then Minnesota, dodging turkeys and white-tailed deer. I especially appreciated the billboard advertising the roadside stop named, aptly, “Tourist Trap”, but keep going. The St. Louis river at Duluth is shockingly red, hopefully just from the red clay soils of its watershed.
Our best stop of the day is at a small town gas station, adjacent to a strip of freshly mowed grass. Here Liesl gets to chase a racquetball for long bounding runs, happy that I finally remembered that she needs some play time.
Fargo, ND. Fargo's climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate near South Sioux City, Nebraska. The typical summer in South Sioux City, Nebraska is 4.4°F (2.5°C) warmer and 20.1% wetter than summer in Fargo.
I get a room in Fargo, ND, making it our first (and probably only) four-state day. I don’t like the parking lot scene—a dented car with boys wearing jeans slug low over their boxers, carrying their red Jordans. I haul gear up two flights of stairs to keep the car free of visible goodies. I am so tired of dealing with gear schlepping.
In the morning, we set out again. We’re out of the trees now, and the sky opens up, brightening my mood. It is a fantastic show. We speed west as a storm front speeds east, long streamers of rain on either side of us. Dramatic blues and lavenders highlighted with white fill the sky, changing every minute, whirling in different ways depending on the direction you look, seeming almost liquid in form.
My mind has been turning over this notion of “home”. It seems to be a theme on this trip; a quest of sorts. And I know all of the cliché and the genuine wisdom surrounding the concept: home is inside of ourselves, not a geography. Home is the place you return to after you set out on a journey “out there” to find it. Home is wherever you are with the people you love, and who love you. Home is wherever you’re at right now; it’s a sense of home, rather than a physical place. Home is the open road.
Despite knowing all of these things, I don’t have any sense of resolution about the matter. I know I am searching for it. The search presents the problems—yes, of geography. but also other matters. Does this search for home mean that I will just have to resign myself to being alone? What if I find the perfect place…what man is going to show up and join me in my perfect place, without changing it into something other than my perfect place?
You would be surprised at the amount of effort it can take to be the luckiest woman in the world. And it is often very lonely.
And she said, "losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow"
- Paul Simon, Graceland
“Home” is also a delicious concept when you are traveling with a lot of stuff. Too much stuff, yes, but it really would be easier with something like a truck camper or van. I ponder different configurations, and the notion of home on the road. I think about my gorgeous little place back in Sonoma County, and that’s a fine home. I could be there now, and wouldn’t have to be schlepping my stuff or dealing with all the aches and pains of driving.
But then I also remember part of why I wanted to be out here in the first place: to escape the sense of waking up in the morning, and facing another day exactly like the last one. I know, too, that that is not a failing of the place, but of my own mindset, but how I am loving waking up and knowing that today will be different than yesterday, through no effort of my own.
A fast interstate and the ever-changing tableau of open sky and landscape make it a good travel day. The speed limits rise and the gas prices go down. My mind travels over the past, past homes and past loves and how they came together—and didn’t. They were worth it. I’ve come to accept that loss is always the cost, whether it’s a love or a sense of home.
And my traveling companions
Are ghosts and empty sockets
I'm looking at ghosts and empties
But I've reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland
- Paul Simon, Graceland
Better to think of them as experiments. “Think” is the wrong word here. Experience? Feel? Notice? At it’s best, it’s more a sense of being in some state of Grace.
Despite the pain it causes in my body, I love the driving across the land—the changing landscape, music playing—classic road-trip stuff. The chance to muse on my experiences, or to finally discover the gold that’s been there all along in the heart of a pop song.
I stop at a grocery store and get a couple days worth of food, and call the rangers at Theodore Roosevelt National Park—I’m about two and half hours away, what are my chances at getting a campsite? They are non-committal, but it sounds promising.
Nearing the park, the land changes, just as it does near any National Park or border, in this case the colorfully eroded sediment layers of badlands and green meadows. I see wild bison for the first time. Look! This park was recommended by my friends, Marge and Paul, during my stop at Borrego Springs, as one that is often overlooked, making it less prone to the kind of hordes that descend on Yellowstone.
The town of Medora is at the south entrance to the park, and feels rather descended upon. There’s a line at the park entrance, but at the gate the ranger tells me to go directly to the campsite for a chance at what’s left. I do, and the Cottonwood campground host finds a site next to the Little Missouri River that’s available for two nights because of a cancellation. He points out a bend in the river downstream, and says that when the water is lower, the wild horses come down in the morning to drink. The water is probably too high for that now, the bank is too steep.
It’s hot, humid, and there are even more mosquitos and other biting things than in Michigan, but it’s also beautiful and I’m glad to be here, feeling road-weary from two long travel days. Liesl is happy to sit in my camp chair and watch me put Agnes up, wagging her tail and standing up when she sees me get the mattress out of the car. She’s learning the routine.
I know we’ll get rain tonight; thunderstorms are likely, so I place everything as best I can to avoid tromping through mud in the morning. I stake Agnes down well, but as usual neglect the guylines because she’s so sturdy.
It takes forever for the sun to go down and for it to cool. It feels like Ghana. All I want to do is take my clothes off and lie down in the privacy of my tent. Eventually, I’m able to do that. I see that the rain will probably come around 1:30am, and make sure I have everything I’ll want in the morning in the tent so I can just hunker down and sleep late. Endless gear schlepping. I fantasize about trading Thirsty in for a truck camper. I’m sweaty and stinky and covered in DEET.
As best I can see, we’ll be on the southern edge of the storm. I sleep, fitfully. The thunder and lightning approach for hours. At one point, I dream about lightning strikes, and trying to explain to someone that if you’re right next to one, you don’t hear its thunder.
Right on schedule, I hear the rain starting, and can hear the wind above us in the trees. “Maybe I should put some clothes on, just in case,” I think, and do, quickly, lightning strobing now, closer. As soon as I pull on a shirt and skirt, the ferocious gust front hits us.
And suddenly Agnes caves in along her southwest corner.
I push the pole back out and try to hold it, thinking she’ll pop back into place. Maybe I can just hold it up through the worst of the storm. But I can’t get it to pop back, and the side of the tent is collapsing.
“Let’s go, Liesl”, I say, and pick her up while slipping into my sandals. The wind is howling now, Agnes flapping, and I fumble to get the zippers down to get out. I have to put Liesl down and use two hands, and am grateful that she hunkers down against my leg, ears back, while I get the tent opened. I grab her and run for the car through horizontal rain, toss her in her riding box, and promise to be right back.
I run back and grab the most valuable things in the tent, slinging bags over my shoulders, and waddle back through the rain, throw it all in car, and get in myself, looking like a shipwreck survivor. I wish I had set those guylines. I was dumb to know that a storm was possible and not do it.
Liesl’s fine now and hunkers down. It’s harder for me. I’ve never before had such intimacy with a storm. It’s terrifying but also exciting. The lightning never stops, nor the thunder. The wind…the godawful wind. Thirsty bounces but holds tightly to the ground, luckily she’s in second-best position, facing away from the wind. I see lights and headlights as other campers make their own efforts to get through it. I steady myself with the game of “what are the odds?”—what are the odds that, of all the vehicles in this campground, the Subaru with the big fat woman is the one to flip over? Those odds aren’t very good, I’ll see the headlights of other cars flipping over first. So all I have to do is ride this out. And, again—it’s pretty exciting. Not like every other day.
There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
"Whoa, so this is what she means"
She means we're bouncing into Graceland
- Paul Simon, Graceland
After about forty minutes of fear and thrills, the storm finally subsides. I’m able to get weather info on my phone—it seems like I should have gotten an alert when the watch turned into a severe warning, but in any event I’m glad we escaped the hail that was also warned. I’m even able to find info about the river level, and feel pretty confident that it’s not going to surge up the banks and into the campground.
There’s still enough distant lightning that I don’t need a light to go back to the tent and retrieve more comforts. I can’t get Agnes to right herself, even after pushing off gallons of water out of her collapsed corner. The mattress is wet at one end, but I’m able to schlep it to the car and reconfigure things to sleep there. As I do, the campground host comes through in his pickup and asks if I’m okay. I am. I ask him about everyone else. “Well, a tent blew away over there,” he says. But he’s still making rounds.
I crawl back into the car with Liesl and try to sleep, but only doze off a little before the sun of the north comes blazing up at five in the morning.
I figure I can take the day to get Agnes set right and deal with the complete jumble of stuff now in the car and the wet tent. It’s then when I see that it wasn’t just wind that collapsed Agnes; she took a hit from a tree branch. Not big enough to kill me, but big enough to break an opposing tent pole and put a rip in the rainfly—and it would have been an injury to anyone underneath. Luckiest woman in the world and her dog, however, were on the other side of the tent.
I’m exhausted, sore, feeling defeated, and not sure of what to do. But I know that it’s usually a good idea for me to slow down. After some deliberating, I surrender and book a place on AirBnB, just about three hours away in Montana. I’ve got to work during the week, so I just take a deep breath and go for five nights in a little house on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere near Circle, MT. And then I start packing up, letting the car stay a complete jumble, but taking some time to commandeer the big stall in the bathroom to wet-wipe the stink and fear off me and put on fresh clothes.
Even after a storm like that, most other campers I pass don’t even say hello. I remember this from the last time I left Kabile; it feels so incredibly rude. But it’s not, it’s just the culture. But it’s weird. Didn’t we all just get through something together?
For reasons I cannot explain
There's some part of me wants to see
Graceland
And I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending
Or maybe there's no obligations now
Maybe I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland
- Paul Simon, Graceland
I stop to tell the campground host I’m out a day early. “Had enough?” he laughs, but even by his standards the storm was rough. He tells me that the folks in the site next to me had a smashed hatchback window, but as far as he knows, no one was hurt. He hopes that the storm blew out the heat and humidity, as people have been leaving early due to that, but I’ve already looked at the forecast and it seems like it will be another hot day.
From there we head out on the scenic drive through the park, stopping for wildflowers, entertaining prairie dog towns, wild horses, and bison.
At one point, the bison are using the road and we have to stop for long minutes as they pass, nearly brushing the car. My bravery has been spent for a while, though, and I keep the windows up as they pass. They look so powerful.
We stop at the sights, and take lackadaisical tourist photos. It’s lovely, and I’m happy to be here, but I’m tired.
On the way out of the park, I stop at the visitor’s center. The rangers behind the desk look eager for someone to ask a question.
“Do you have any weather data from last night,” I ask.
The ranger grins happily, he’s got this. “Yes, we had 0.4 inches of rain!”
“How about wind speed?”
His smile widens. “Max wind speed of 90 miles per hour!”
Thanks for reading along! I am enjoying a few days of rest and recovery in Big Sky Country, and talking with the tent makers about what can be done about poor Agnes.
Teresa, your Dad and I always imagined you traveling the world in a Volkswagen Bus, sounds like that might be in your thinking! LoveMom. 🚌🚌🚎🚎
A tent a dog a car a girl : a woman, a car called Thirsty, a dog Lisel, the teller of her tale Terrie tapping out all she sees and feels in the sunlight of her mind under the great big sky in Mondany resting after a big big storm and a long lovely but onerous trip of driving west from Michigan and telling the seeing
: Lisel is the dog and Thirsty is the trusty auto, Agness the tent, and Terry Schweitzer is brave dauntless but concerned and even scared sometimes in a powerpoint-like still active movie-like narrative that is diary-like in notations and BUT UNaction movie like fully feelinglike and thoughtful at points also too and without all the intentional thrusting and testing/ tearing of "the action movie" (which i would hate) as she hunkers past under those liquid skies thinking of home and what it means beyond her own home as you drive through the bugs and rain and heat from Michigan continuing you trip "home".