Up north and your father takes the long way to show me the hard woods, flashes of white birch, his best hay field. Up north we watch the Packers, then the Vikes.
Up north the snow is up to our knees and we lose the dog once, twice, three times. Up north and the snow keeps falling.
Up north the house is decorated with wooden nutcrackers, your mother’s collection stacked deep on every table. You say My brother was the nutcracker in the school play. I laugh, imagining the one I know now. Then I realize you meant the other one.
Up north in Oulu—turn right off Route 2 at the boulder painted like a Finnish flag—we watch the glassblower breathe a blue fish. The heat is orange on our faces but our legs freeze at our boots.
Up north there is Lutheran coffee and not nearly enough wine. Up north we snowshoe and learn the unsteady rock and sway of sailboats.
Up north and I am not so good at snowshoeing.
Up north we get into a bottle of blueberry mead, pull off fleece in the dark. Blue-spark these cold still nights.
Love it. You've captured it. (Um, I mean I can relate to your depiction of "up north" not necessarily, you know, like the personal X&B stuff... um, that sounds weird.)
ReplyDeleteAhem, what I mean is, I enjoyed this post, especially the last line. Keep the awesomeness coming; some of us feed on it. Okay, I feed on it. You don't want me to starve, right? That's right.
The word verification is "puggicus." Sounds like Spartacus's dog. That, too, is awesome.