On Moving North

and "where ever you go, there you are".

My rustic first home in the north and the lake just outside my front door.

I moved to northern Minnesota in June 2017 to work at a remote wilderness lodge on the Gunflint Trail, and shake up what had begun to feel like a stagnant existence. At that time, in my late-mid-twenties, I hoped that changing my location from the sweet, sleepy city of St. Paul to the wild boreal forest would allow me to leave behind the things I didn’t like about myself (there were so many) and become new. 

After my first week on the job as a housekeeper and begrudging front desk customer service person (I’d rather clean toilets than deal with difficult guests), I found myself already in a funk. The shine of the nightly walks on the gravel road between the trees and waking up to the lake outside my window had already dimmed in the shade of still being, well, myself. 

On my first set of days off, I drove thirty miles to Grand Marais, the nearest town, for groceries and supplies. While there, I wandered aimlessly, feeling adrift and strange. At the grocery store, I stared blankly at the high prices of food, forgetting what and how I ate. 

When I got back to what was now my home–a dusty, boxy old little cabin–a storm blew in, bringing wind and rain. Instead of a day on the dock reading and swimming like I’d planned, I watched Manchester by the Sea, which deeply depressed me, and ate all the ice cream I’d bought to eat some night later that week after closing at work. 

I wanted to be around people, but the few people I knew were working, and I didn’t know them well enough yet to ask to hang out after. I wanted to talk to G, but I resisted texting him because I knew that he loved me and I was going to hurt him because I didn’t love him back, but even though I didn’t fully want to be with him, I couldn’t seem to let him go. I felt overwhelmed by the sadness of love and hurt and moving and change and wanted to never love or hurt anyone again. 

From out of this haze, sugared and sad, I saw the sky had cleared. Begrudgingly, I got off the couch, put on an ugly thrifted sweater and a baseball cap doused with bug spray, and went for a walk. My body felt sluggish and heavy, a contrast to the lightness of the June breeze. I was beginning to regret coming outside where the beauty of the lake and balsam tried to nudge me out of that familiar, easy place of being disheartened by myself.

I rounded the first corner on the gravel service road that I had been walking every evening, and looked up. 

A female moose with two fuzzy babies. Rapture. Miracle. 

They stared at me for a second before they spooked and darted behind the forest service boathouse. I stood there, awestruck at what I had just stumbled upon, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. My heart surged with adrenaline at being so close to such wildness while on foot. I felt so relieved knowing these two leggy baby moose existed, a new generation of this beleaguered species, which had declined dramatically in the past decade. I felt hope.

I went and got my coworkers, who had just gotten off work. We hopped in a canoe and floated on the still water until past dusk, watching the moose wander right by us, the mother munching on the new June leaves of the underbrush while her babies wove between her legs. We were all still new to each other, and this novel experience bonded us, gave us a story to share.

When I got back inside after, returning to where I had felt so blank and sad just hours before, I could see that what I had come here for was futile. I was not going to transform overnight into a new person by uprooting and changing my location, though it would have been nice.  

I had come here to, over and over, make the impossible decision after eating too much and watching too much TV and forgetting myself, to step out into the buggy night anyway

and just look up.

A blurry photo of the mother moose with her two young babies, June 2017.

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