Full Moon on The Gitch

I have an appointment with the moon.

That's what I told my husband as I crawled out of bed last Sunday noon and proceeded to water plants and write lists and pack up my cares and woes and hit the road, waving to the image of the two of them, my husband and daughter, growing smaller in the rearview mirror.

Six hours later I was ensconced at one of the 33 coolest places on the planet.

Full Moon on The Gitch with Citronella. Sounds like the title of a painting. Or the special-of-the-day at some tony restaurant in the warehouse district.

While the rest of the state withered in the heatwave, I sat between tiki torches on the beachhouse deck at The Cabin, with a glass of wine and a wind from the West and no mosquitoes and a full red moon rising up out of The Lake like the opening credits at some humongous drive-in movie. A cricket whistled and a treefrog sang descant and I realized I'd never been happier at any single moment in a long lifetime of moments.

I said it, aloud to the cricket and the moon and the universe in general, "This is as good as it gets."

That's how the cable guy described our forty acres out on the Wildwood Road ten years ago. He looked around at the wildflower meadow and the oldgrowth pine forest and the river rushing past and announced reverently that we'd just purchased "one of the 33 coolest places on the planet." He was dead serious, as if he'd undertaken an exhaustive study and was pleased to inform us of our inclusion on this exclusive list.

Soon after, the guns started.

A long ugly story. Suffice to say I'd amend the platitude that one can never be "too thin or too rich" by adding "or own too large a piece of land." Not if Nature, Privacy and Silence are what you're after.

Americans like to congratulate themselves on being the standardbearers for respecting the rights of others. What a crock. Not when it comes to noise, jack. And most assuredly not when it comes to exercising that most precious entitlement of all, the right to bear arms. And to fucking discharge them, no matter the sound can be heard in the next fucking county.

After only nine months (a poignant interval of time, n'est pas?), we packed up our cares and woes and left the Wildwood Road (formerly the Pig Farm Road, which should've been a clue) and slouched back toward town, tails between our legs. At least we had legs, and tails to tuck between them. Unlike those poor unfortunate pigs who'd once lived down the lane, not to mention their less domestic counterparts out in the woods. Like all of them, we'd been systematically dispatched to another world. Only our new world was, for better or worse, still part of the same planet. Just not one of the 33 coolest places. Although for townie-living, it might be in the top 500.

Sitting in front of the drive-in moon watching fireflies flit between the stars, it was hard to recall the rage and despair I felt after Wildwood. I could've been as happy sitting by that river as I am here by this Lake. Which suggests that the capacity for happiness lies within, another platitude. Still, the entire Northshore is a designated game refuge (hey don't get me started on that "game" thing, jack, we're just talkin here!), and Wildwood was dead center Deep North redneckville. Maybe place does play a part in the pursuit-of-happiness thing.

I should track down that cable guy and get his assessment of The Cabin. Which is, after all, situated on Lake Superior. Whereas Wildwood was on the Sucker River. Which should've been a clue.