To Wawa, Ontario

I'm chasing ignorance. Mine specifically. I see it everywhere and like a mad fire fighter I get dizzy with stomping it out, spinning like a dervish at 78 rpm. It was this very ignorance that took me to the tip of Michigan. I knew nothing about it. No one ever talks about it. And that strange peninsula to the west, what's with that?

It is the same stomping that causes me turn up some rutted side road. What does it have to offer? What can it show me? What can I discover there? On my way North that morning I turned off the pavement. The lakes up there cause the side roads to twist and turn. It was overcast and I lost my North. It didn't really matter. I found a nice lake and recorded there for a little bit. Eventually I found my way back and it only took an hour or so. It is beautiful in Northern Michigan full of nature and wilderness.

I drove on up through Mackinac and saw their Carnegie Library with the tin dome. Once over the bridge I turned to the East, determined to see a bit more of what is up on this little peninsula. It, too was was a nice area to drive. It has a lovely, marshy coastland and the marsh grasses had a nice, late summer color to them. Highway 129 cuts North across the peninsula. Straight North. That is one straight road! 26 miles of straightness. I had to take side roads just because I missed making turns. I made it to Sault Sainte Marie. I would cross the bridge to Sault Sainte Marie and would be in Canada. If they would let me in....

There must be something suspicious about me. I always get picked up for additional searches. When I went to Australia, I was the one pulled out of line... At that time I had to answer questions about the vitamins I took with me. "Gee, do we allow ginko biloba in this country?" Two-thirds of the time I fly in the U.S. I am one of the ones "randomly chosen" for a terrorist search. Though I understand they are trying to be fair by doing random searches and not "profiling," but you know... how about reverse profiling. One flight I was pulled aside along with an 18 year old blonde girl and a 70 year old black couple. I don't mind so much that I am always picked out, but come on, the other three people are in no way a threat and it is a waste of tax dollars to search 18 year old girls and 70 year old black couples.

Anyhow, at the Canadian border I was picked out as a suspicious person. Perhaps it is how I answered the questions.

"Do you have any alcohol?"

"Um, yes there is a bottle of wine in the back."

"Do you have any firearms?"

"Goodness no!"

"Do you have any other weapons, knives or anything"

"No... um wait, I have a chef's knife back there, does that count?"

"No, it would have to be one of those survival knives or a switch blade."

"On no, nothing like that."

"Where are you headed?"

"North! I want to see if I can see the Northern Lights. Is it the right time of year for that?"

"Well I hear the best time is July and August. I've seen them once right here."

I was handed a yellow slip and instructed to pull over into one of the inspection bays. I was greeted by two officers who asked for my yellow slip. They asked questions similar to the last set then they handed back the yellow slip and sent me inside. I went back to my truck and grabbed my sachel to bring it inside with me, just a habit. The satchel has my computer and camera gear. If something ever happened to it I would be in a serious bad way, so I have a policy of never letting it get more than 10 feet from me. Paranoid, perhaps, but if something happened, not only shame on me but hell on wheels craphouse that I have to deal with.

The officer inside asked me for ID and my yellow slip. It was gone. I remembered handing to the officers outside but didn't remember getting it back.

"I don't think they handed it back to me."

Oh gee! Would I get in trouble? Could I act more suspicious if I was trying?

I was asked if I had been in Canada before and if I had enough money to get the hell out when they were sick of me. Yes, yes, just let me know. It was simple enough. I am now in their database along with pictures of me and my car and every answer I gave out.

After that bit I was sent outside where the two officers asked me for my yellow slip. "I thought you had it."

"No, we handed it back. You put it with your passport."

"Oh gee!"

"Maybe it fell out when you were getting your bag."

I checked, it had. The next step was tearing apart the back of my truck. I built a stowage system back there to keep my stuff out of view. Now I had to tear it apart. While I was doing that the other officer searched the cab section of my truck. When I had put it back the two officers were rifling though my sachel. I guess I made them awfully curious about the satchel the way I made a point of taking it with me inside. They must have been having fun. I have some catalogs for Bowworks.com which have a picture of a tree frog sitting on a violin bow on the cover, a little strange. Then they pulled out a batch of my business cards which have a chicken in a flying saucer on them.

"Is this you? Planet Chicken?" One asked incredulously

"Yeah, take one, how often do you get a picture of a chicken in a spaceship?"

One officer declined, the other accepted the card with a look in his eye that said "I'm going to check up on you."

Finally, I was allowed to go. I was a little flustered and didn't have any cars ahead of me to follow, so I immmediately made a wrong turn and in 15 minutes I was pretty sure that I was clueless and needed a map. I found a gas station that had maps and realized that I don't have any Canadian money. Fortunately. my VISA card had me covered. The map gave me half a clue where I was and where to go. I recollected seeing a sign that said "Currency Exchange" right by where I left the inspection place.

I made it out of Canadian Sault Sainte Marie pretty easily after that. I generally don't have problems navigating in strange cities without a map. But either I was discombobulated from my border crossing or the clues that keep me oriented are dialectic and change subtly in Canada. I wonder what I will have to go through to get back into the states? What will I do if they don't let me back in? Do they have to let me in because I am a citizen? What if they don't want me any more? Oy!

Once again I was observing how something simple like crossing a neck of water can change the landscape drastically. I was driving Northwest along the Northern shore of Lake Superior. It is beautiful, rugged, rocky country with pine trees and lovely birch trees. There is the occasional Maple tree with one branch ablaze in it's autumn crimson. And dramatic views around every bend in the road. And then there are the distances. In this part of Canada, things are far apart You can't predict a motel in about every other town. I ended driving about eighty miles further than I had intended. This was a very good thing.

I ended up in Wawa, Ontario at a nice motel called the Parkway Motel and ate at an incredible restaurant called the Kinniwabi Pines Restaurant. There are stories behind these two places that are interesting. I will tell you about them tomorrow.