Up North - Part One

Okay, I've gone soft. But, be fair to me, I had a rough and sleepless night (and not the fun, sexy kind) and a very scary day at work and all I can think about is tucking to a Little Caeser's cheese pizza and the bottle of cab on my counter. Forgive me. Enjoy part one of the Up North saga. More to come tomorrow, I promise.


I rolled down the windows as we reached the Vilas county line. The coolness of the air licked down my arm. I left the city under a ceiling of steamy air that pressed down on us all like a damp washcloth, the kind they used to give you on airplanes. I could already feel the pressure letting out.

Scott was anxious and I thought I understood. I wished we could stop the truck on the side of the highway where all the wildflowers and ragweed reached for the softer sunshine and just sleep in a field and spend the week in this perfect desolation. But he knew better. I had never been Up North. That’s what they all call it, Up North. All I understood was that a bunch of kids pooled their money and bought a house and food and a lot of beer and lived by a lake. The thing communists are probably jerking it to in their mind’s eye. The kind of life that can only exist one week every year.

Part of me felt sad when Kara had explained it. The fact that this week in the woods was the social highlight of the year. When you pin so much love on one place, one time, one idea, how much can you leave for the rest of your life? But I had been hungry in those days.

Really hungry. The kind of starvation when you are walking to work in a heat wave and your fridge has been empty for a week and your family and your bank and your government are all calling you, asking you things and asking you for things and all you could think of to say is,
When was the last time you were really, truly hungry?

When Kara had told me they were going Up North and that I simply had to go, I asked her this very question. And she understood. And I went back to my job at the bank and didn’t think about their communist vacation any more.

Until she called again. She had figured a way to pay my share if I still wanted to go. And then I had to go. Because who had ever sought my company so ferociously? When a hand reaches out to you, whatever length their reach is, it is an atrocity not to reach back.