Part II (a short travelogue continued)

Nothing left to do but watch the sun set and drown in the western waters of Lake Superior.

Too tired to sleep now he walked back to the car and reached around in the back seat for a bottle of beer and a flashlight. From the glove box he filtered through gas station receipts he was saving for no one and found a pen and a postcard.

Hands full he sat on the low grass and wrote a postcard to a wrong address. And, with the world dark and still, he stared at the half moon up there in the cloudless sky and dreamed about happy fire lit nights on the Minas shore far away from the lakes of this lonely interior wilderness. An old warm place that’s near dead now, freezing alone on the cold stones of the Canadian shield.

Ahh... how easy it is for memory to make a saint of history, he thought. And, anyway, tomorrow he’ll be near the height of land, arriving with nothing more than blood, bones and an automobile. At the place where the great plains and the exdous begins, the ancient savannah, the source of this burning desolation.

But, as from dust he and we were born, he will roll through it with two hands on the wheel. And, then, with the rocky mountains in his mind and the mileage ticking west, he'll look ahead to the myth.