I have been coming here for two years, at least that is what I think. Could be three, but when your years are based on school semesters, and your girlfriend is a year above you, it is easy to lose sight of how long it has been since you started visiting her place during breaks.

Now, every time has gotten easier being so up north. To be honest, the first trip was most terrifying, as I had never met my girlfriend’s parents before, because I had never had a girlfriend before to begin with. Uncharted territory was scary, but let's just say things are easy when you get along with everyone, especially since the Dad is a Tolkien die-hard fan, and was down to just talk to me for hours about the lore and answer questions I had about Middle Earth. It got so nerdy, that at one point, everyone left and we spent about two hours in a room, me listening and him explaining The Silmarillion. Story time if you will.

I have done many things here. I learned how to ski for the first time. Which mind you, if it is your first time doing anything at 21 years of age, it’s going to be fucking hard my friends. I had never shot or held any weapon before, but last tie I was here for Thanksgiving I learned how to shoot a crossbow. I hope I did Daryl some justice, but I would’ve done worse if hordes of undead were making their way to me, so maybe I shouldn’t expect much adoration from the hillbilly hero.

I had only gone swimming in a lake once before, and that moment is way back in my early teen years down in NJ in a tiny little lake. Up here in Michigan, the lakes are a bit bigger. Correction. Substantially bigger. I didn’t go swimming in any of the Great Lakes, but I think they are all connected? Still not sure about that one. I’ll have to check my facts.

But if there is one thing I had never done before, was be in a town as small as where my girlfriend is from. I had never been so up north that it feels like the only people are a handful of folks that are shacked up in town, with nature surrounding them in every direction. Harsh conditions that grounded flights and made me stay overnight at the Detroit or Chicago airports. I had never experienced someone being bale to tell me every single person’s name on the street, or at a bar, and what they do. Every. Single. One.

Being from a city like Mexico City, I think I have bumped into someone I knew twice. One of them being embarrassing because of being too drunk at a friends house that his parents had to call mine to get picked up. Where I didn’t really want to face them and apologize, my family ran into their whole family the next morning at Sunday Brunch in a random ass restaurant, that proved to me that if there is a God, his sense of humor revolves around my awkward moments in life. But here, I kind of liked how everyone knows everyone, even though my girlfriend and her friends peach to me how awful it is to know everyone and that nightlife is not what they want it to be, at least not like in bigger cities where they were at college. But I liked it.

It is different up here in the North. Plaid, Denim, Boots, Came, Beer, Whiskey, Hunting, Woods, Wilderness, The Wild. Pickup Trucks, Mudding, Breweries, Rock & Roll. Definitely a different scene from what you can find on the East Coast. But I like it, I really do. It is simpler, the air is cleaner. The fields are vast, and the stars actually visible. Nature is more present here, a bigger part of life, and that feels good inside. It is instinctual, I feel calmer about things. I am so far up North, the troubles of the world seem so far away when all you are focused on how bad it is outside when you go out if it is Winter, or try and decide what to do when it is gorgeous outside in the Summer. It is prettier here, where it doesn’t feel like an excursion to go somewhere untouched by civilization as if Nature was a rarity to come by, and a destination to tour for just a while, and then go back to the respective metropolis you came from.

It doesn’t take much to fall in love with a place like this. Wait for your girl to get out of work, and walk around town. The shops, the coffee shops, the general stores, the way people greet you, the way people interact with each other. The way everything revolves around being outside, instead of slaving away in front of a screen. It doesn’t take much, but then again, have I really embraced it if I have yet to get my own Petoskey Stone? I’ll let the locals decide if I am no longer a fudgie. ~ad astra ultraque