Out of the woods, into the fire

Reimmersion. I departed Ely this past Monday morning at 6am for the airport, finally arriving home 16 hours later for my extended winter break. I had been yearning in the last week or so for the east coast, and was satiated as soon as I touched down in Boston. The Silver Line shuttle driver cut off an elderly man and proceeded to loudly berate and flip him the bird long after his Buick Century had been left in our smog billow. Breathe it in, that's home.
My wish to see more young people was also granted when I was assigned to Black Friday's midnight to 9am shift at my occasional job at--get ready-- J.Crew. ("...Her?") In case you missed it a moment ago, let me repeat: I was assigned to work a nine hour overnight shift on the busiest shopping day of the year directly after consuming my own weight in tryptophan. Frankly, seeing the way customers acted that night I can't imagine that the economy didn't come charging and ululating out of the grave to run around the country kicking in people's windows and lighting cars on fire. Also of note is that while driving/whining into Freeport nursing a mug of black tea I passed Santa on a motorcycle leading a pack of roughly 100 people running down Main Street. Men in short shorts, children, teenagers in jeans, dogs, mothers pushing strollers, the Grinch. I checked the papers the next morning but the incident remains unexplained.
Another sign that I was home came during a lunch break one day. I found myself eating sushi while reading The New Yorker, wearing a cardigan and ballet flats and still blending into the background, despite sitting in LL Bean's hunting and fishing department. (Hi, New England!) I also spent an large amount of time this week advising middle aged women on what to wear on their cruise to the Bahamas this year.
So, I'm on a break from the northland until Christmas. I'm leaving today to spend three weeks on a European beach with my far-flung boyfriend and plan to have a delightful time. Stay tuned for northland updates though-- I still have plenty of anecdotes up my sleeve.

Socializing

So, again, this is Ely Minnesota (pop 3,702). It's 250 miles north of the twin cities, 100 miles from a bus station, over an hour to the closest McDonald's, literally the end of the road. As in, the roads end in Ely and the only way to get to Canada is to walk or canoe the 10 miles, but once you cross the border you still have about 500,000 acres of wilderness before you find another road. I've been here roughly two months and have yet to meet anyone between the ages of 17 and 42, and I have yet (with the sole exception of my boss) to meet someone over 17 who is not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have done these things trying to make friends:
1)Attend the Ely High School football banquet, where I watched kids named Storm and Bear and Sky get their letters. (Side note: chose this particular evening to wear my tangerine cardigan, not realizing it was right before the deer opener so half the room was dressed in hunter orange. It was almost like fitting in... almost.)
2)Stop as I was walking home from work on a Thursday night to watch a VW van pull up to a bar. I stood seven feet away and gazed at the young people getting out. I was carrying only half a loaf of bread in my hand, unbagged.
3)Follow a guy roughly my age through the aisles while he grocery shopped, trying to think of witty things to say about organic salsa as an icebreaker. Came up empty.
4)Attend the Ely High School musical, which just so happened to be High School Musical. You really haven't heard 'We're All in This Together' until you've heard it sung in heavy Minnesota accents through a speaker system that works only 30% of the time.
5)Most shamefully, made my one friend (58 y/o, you guessed it, recovering alcoholic) go to a bar with me on Halloween under the pretense of watching the world series game but really to try to meet other people. She made it four innings before asking if she could leave. Everyone was my parents' age anyways.

Yes, I'm not really proud of any of these things, but since there are statistically only like 40 people in town in my age range I have to think outside the box.

A few selections from this week's classifieds

WANTED: To Mount Your Antlers For This Christmas! Bring in by Dec.15 or FREE ANTLER MOUNTS With Trade Of Good Capes From Bucks 170Lbs Plus--Call For Details before skinning. ---.----

WANTED: the heart, liver, and any extra deer meat a hunter who gets a deer doesn't want. Contact ---.----

BESTSELLING AUTHOR of Romance with SASS: Suspense, Angst, Seductive Sizzle Margie Church will be signing books at Piragis and Lisa's Second Floor Bookstore Thanksgiving night. This is your chance to meet a local Minnesota author and get your exciting copy of Avenging Allaire.

Hope Lutheran Church Lutefisk and Meatball Dinner, Dec.5 12-5pm.

Open Season

Two weekends ago marked the opening of deer season in Minnesota. Ely has come alive. By Friday afternoon main street had turned into a parade of pickups bursting with hunters, dogs and guns streaming out of town so they could get started shooting deer bright and early Saturday. The ladies in my pilates class were all a-titter Friday morning, talking about how excited they were to finally get some venison back in their meat freezer. Just for comparison, East coast ladies who take pilates don't own meat freezers or three guns apiece. Hunting season is the most culture-shocked I've been since getting here, and I'm not even a city girl. Everyone in town was already wearing camo on an everyday basis, but as soon as deer season started the blaze orange came out in ways you can't even imagine. My boss' daughter (freshly single, if you remember) had invitations from two different boys to go hunting with them this weekend. It seems that killing deer together is the Ely High School equivalent of dinner at Applebee's and a Vince Vaughn movie for the rest of us. However, she chose to go with former boyfriend, which evidently rekindled the romance.
I've put together a little photo montage to try to portray what deer season is like. Keep in mind this is only a taste of what Ely is like right now, and there's still another week to go. I hope you enjoy.

Camoflage cake, courtesy of my friends in AlAlon (which is actually all my friends) who were full of cake but still hungry for venison.

You can drop your deer hide off in this cement pit at the gas station if you're not going to use it. You can also bring your dead deer into the grocery store and they will butcher it for you. Like, walk right through the front door past the produce with the carcass slung over your shoulder. Also let's look at the closeup:

Here you can see the ATV on the back of the SUV, the deer hide drop off, and the two men entering the gas station dressed in their finest.

So I went to my boss' homestead (40 miles outside of Ely, just unbelievably off the grid) for the weekend to do some novelty hunting. By which I mean work on my Rubik's cube while sitting inside wearing orange. I may have showed up in skinny jeans and Converse and Banana Republic outerwear, but thank goodness I brought my orange sweatband. I'm totally ready to go hunting, you guys!

The mannequin in the window of the radio station (what are they supposed to display, RADIO WAVES? Don't be ridiculous) was able to demonstrate how hunting works, apparently.

A shelf in my boss' house. I was way too terrified to figure out where the rest of the deer was.

Flyers around town

To aLL peT owners
A woLf has recenTLy kiLLed aT LeasT 2 dogs in The ELy area. These were day Time aTTacks. PLease keep a cLose waTch on your peTs. If you waiT TiLL iTs Too LaTe iTs Like having your hearT and souL Tore ouT.
signed
a concerned and grieving peT owner

What time is it?

So this is probably my favorite Ely anecdote so far, and happened even before I moved in. First off, I should probably note that the people in this town are all but frothing at the mouth with friendliness, at least those over 50. There's also a seemingly endless supply of matronly women eager to give me tips on whatever I'm doing the moment they happen to be walking past me. Apparently I radiate the deer in the headlights look of a rudderless charity case who needs some mothering. I have been good n' mothered in virtually every local establishment I have entered, most notably in the spice aisle of the grocery store while picking out dill.
On this particular afternoon however, I was in the public library taking advantage of the free wifi and sitting in a childrens' rocking chair in the Minnesota Room, which is about the size of a closet and filled almost exclusively with birding and plant books. The knees of the elderly employee who was holding dominion over the library that afternoon dodder into my field of vision, followed by his face as he inserts it between mine and my laptop screen.
"Do you know what time it is?"
I had no idea what time it was. Panic. He was definitely about to say something along the lines of 'We closed an hour ago, it's time for you to take your personal computer and get the hell out of my library.'
"Uh, it's um, I think it's like..."
"It's CHOCOLATE time!" He hands me a chocolate bar he'd been hiding behind his back then turns and dodders out of the room.
Frankly it was the best possible answer to that question I could have imagined.

Post Script: Today, the same man doddered back into the Minnesota Room to tell me that he thinks the guy who just vacated the other room must roll in a garbage truck before he comes to the library because he smells so bad. I think the Old Man of the Library and I are friends.

Three things about yesterday

1)I found a gas station that sells guns. This is true.
2)I discovered that the post office closes promptly at 4:20 every day.
3)During our interview for an upcoming article with the Ely mayor, he called the age restrictions on snowmombiling gay.
Welcome to the northland.

Working it OUT

The company I'm working for provides employees (all three of us) with a gym membership at the local gym, bartered for advertising space in one of our publications. The gym is a delightful place. There doesn't appear to be a full time staff, so instead there is a sign next to the door that asks you to kindly turn off the lights and music if you're the last person to leave. It's also fully stocked with wooden nordic-ski machines and very old and complex weight machines, which are tons of fun to play with because hey, there's no staff around to glare at you for doing it wrong.
Today I also took the opportunity to try out the pilates class they offer three days a week. Warm introductions and mothering from all female class participants. The class just about kicked me to the curb though. I'm pretty sure I've been bleeding internally all day, and there was also a moment where I thought I had just torn both triceps off of whatever they were supposed to be attached to. While the prospect of detachable triceps is probably reason enough to keep going back, the true reason I plan on going back is that I finally placed where I had heard the instructor's voice before and it thrills me to no end. It had been nagging me throughout the entire session that her voice sounded so familiar.... If you would, I'd like you to take a moment to envision the narrator in the clip below instructing you in pilates, and you'll have a spot-on idea of how I plan to spend my MWF mornings from now on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygqh8xZwekI&feature=related

Halloween

So I'm finally settling into my wonderful apartment, which has been rather a long time coming. I slept in my boss' apartment for two days as I waited for Current Tenant to clear out, so we're pretty well acquainted now (she is also wonderful). The day before I moved in I spent the entire evening lying in a dark room pretending to be asleep so I wouldn't have to acknowledge the sobs coming from the next room of my boss' 17 year old daughter after she was dumped. Can I reiterate how pleased I am to have some space to myself after a month of similar experiences.
In the meantime I am really hoping that I make some really fun awesome friends in my age bracket by tomorrow in time for Halloween. I don't know if you know this, but if you're 22 and don't have any plans for Halloween you may as well be 45 and spending Christmas alone. If I'm going to be realistic though, I'm probably going to spend tomorrow night hard boiling eggs and watching my box set of Muppet dvds.

H1FUN1, or how I became America's Favorite Houseguest

This past month has been long and exhausting in multiple ways. It’s taken a couple weeks longer than I expected to get on my feet, which actually still hasn’t happened but is imminent. A brief outline of my October:

Oct 1: pull out of my driveway in Maine before dawn with my mother and all my belongings packed in the RAV-4. Drive to Minnesota, stopping briefly to visit various family members in college and graveyards. Also attend my grandfather’s wedding and get a near-overwhelming dose of Norwegian heritage.

Oct 6-7: Welcome to Ely. Frantically apartment search, realize that this town is like 10 blocks in any direction and fire code doesn’t come into play much. The one I sign for technically isn’t available till November, but Current Tenant “will definitely be out the weekend of the 18^th”. Perfect. Spend several days on couch of Matronly Friend of Landlord who took pity on my homelessness and proves to be the nicest person ever. We walk for exercise, paint her living room and go to a brunch celebrating Brett Favre's 40th birthday. I establish a total monopoly on Ely’s 55+ female demographic.

Now this is really the part where I demonstrate why you should all invite me spend time in your homes. Since I don’t have anywhere to live (Current Tenant decides to stay to the 20^th, which is cool, I can totally deal) and nothing to do until my boss-to-be is back in town, I visit friends in the Twin Cities! I spend four days longer than planned on Erin/Anna/Meaghan’s couch, having a delightful, sun-soaked, nostalgia filled week with college friends, generally reveling in the under 55+ demographic. I would have to say that my signature Favored Houseguest move, however, would be showing up to family dinner at Aunt Martha’s and Uncle Bruce’s Monday (planning to just stay one night) with a worrisome cough which then blossoms overnight into H1N1. Current tenant decides to stay until the 26^th. Ok fine, not like standing up is a possibility at this point anyways. I spend the next nine days moaning on their couch, watching lots of movies starring hobbits and coughing National Emergency-level germs on everything they own. Current Tenant decides to stay until the 30^th. I cry, though frankly I’m so puffy and oozy already that my happy face and sobbing face are indistinguishable.

Final score: me-1

Swine Flu-9 days of my life and lots of Martha’s orange juice

Takeaway message: Invite me into your homes! I will probably stay a week longer than I say I will and also maybe infect you and your children with a lethal virus. You haven’t missed your chance completely yet since I’m still homeless for another few days. Special thanks to Current Tenant, who made this all possible, but then made up for it by leaving me her microwave.

The Premise

I'm from the east coast. I just graduated from a midwestern college. I wanted to do something in the publishing realm. New York didn't pan out, so I moved up to Ely, Minnesota (pop. 3,700) to spend a year at an internship with a local publishing company. It only took about 36 hours to realize that this place is different than anywhere I've ever been and probably worth documenting for those who are interested. So read along! Tell your friends and family! Maybe if this blog is popular enough a major film studio will get wind of it and buy the rights and cast a big star in the story of a plucky east coast career girl who moves out to rural Minnesota for a job, only to encounter a host of colorful characters (you betcha!) and embark on a journey of personal growth.


OH WAIT.