I'm reading on the porch as a fire engine roars by with sirens wailing and lights flashing.
The side of the truck reads: "So few serving so many" and it's just as well.
If you dropped an atom bomb out here, the casualties would be in double digits. The region is synonymous with 'remote'.
I'm near the Canadian border in a town that's so small the local bar is closed for half of its regular operating hours because the cook got in a motorcycle accident back in August.
The restaurant struggles onward with only half the menu- simple fixings the manager and bartender can whip up without incident.
The bartender has brand spankin' new shoes purchased without the consenting help of money stolen out of the register. The manager would fire them but then there'd be no one left to hire. The tug of war will continue.
I'm hiding out at this bed and breakfast for seven days and it will rain all seven of them.
Other than the one limping down the street, nearest open restaurants are 9 miles north and 23 miles south.
The temperature is dancing around 40 degrees and to get anything done, my trusty motorcycle and I will have to rely on each other to keep ourselves out of the ditch during the regular downpours.
Huge clouds of mist bellow out the back of trucks headed to lumber yards with their days' worth of wooden gold. Renewable resources are the name of the game out here, something the Iron Range to the southeast will have to grapple with in the coming generations.
Its risky enough that deer around here already dart out in the highway looking for insurance money, I have to ride hundreds of miles in a frigid soggy fog while dodging fits of hypothermia with every trip.
I should also add- I asked for this. My vacation time just didn't agree with the weatherman.
It's nice taking walks in between downpours, however. Not nodding, waving, or saying hello to strangers on the street is seen as kind of rude. People smile at each other and very rarely pass up an opportunity to hold a door open for someone. The men at the gas station yell at each other when saying hello. It's not out of anger, it's because they grew up around farm equipment and their hearing is so shot they would only know if someone broke into their house by smelling the crisp outdoor air flow into the room.
I ponder if they wonder who I am, a drifter wandering about their town.
"I'm just here to recharge" I tell the B&B owner. She's on the horizon of retirement so the cafe shut down, downgrading my B&B to a Charming Motel Status. "It's great to escape for a while."
She smiles with a shrug understanding the sentiment. She escaped from the inner cities of California herself. Up here the biggest committed crimes would be shoveling into your neighbor's yard or keeping the toilet seat up.
Rain falls again.
It's Minnesota nice up here-
Maybe it's because we're in the country.
Or maybe its our proximity of our polite northern neighbors.
When you're this close to Canada the lines start to blur. You'd maybe notice them if they weren't buried in snow every winter.