LAKE COUNTRY, PART II

By Mary Lou Sanelli

Editor’s Note: This is the second half of a two-part essay in which Mary Lou Sanelli chronicles her recent trip to Minnesota to give a talk on her latest book, A Woman Writing. To read the first part, visit metrohnl.com.

The thing that seemed to bother everyone the most was that I was alone. There are places where people look at me funny when I say that I’m traveling alone, and this was one of those places. Even funnier after they ask if I have kids. But if you aren’t in the mood for this sort of questioning, you’d better stick to the cities.

Because in Northern Minnesota, with its long history of mining, you don’t go off into la la land. You don’t say, “My work is not just a job, but an expression of what sustains my passion for life. I probably could have found a way to have kids, too, but to be honest, I didn’t want to.” 



It can be lonely in the world when you are different. I’m far from letting this bother me. What did bother me was how many ways people found to say, “We don’t have black people here.”

The bar’s huge TV screen was abuzz with the question of racism after the shooting in Charleston. And, of course, all of the other shootings. 



This is where my husband would have kicked me under the table. And I would have kicked back, before asking the same question. 



“We’re still pretty safe from all that,” the woman at the table next to me said, reaching for the ketchup.



Shaking salt onto her fries, her friend said, “We don’t have a lot of riff-raf.” 



Even the woman who rented me my bike said, “We don’t really have … minorities here. We are still pretty pristine.” 



Pristine? As in fresh and new? I had to work really, really hard to keep a lid on it. I needed that bike! 



I needed that bike to get away from people. I needed that bike so I could ride through towns with population signs that read 600.

Which sounds charming, until you are there.

I needed that bike to forget the world’s bigotry, not to mention my own worries. I needed that bike to get lost. 



By day three, after passing so many lakes, I started to think a lot about the difference between lake country and ocean shores.

Lakes, I was beginning to see, are more reflective of a way of life where people know, or want to, what’s on the other side. 



But the ocean, well, you never know. Everything is wide open. My neighbors come from every corner of the globe. I felt such a wave of homesickness, I had to stop peddling and pull over.



I happily arrived at my destination. No bears. No wolves. No perverts. 



And I don’t know, I felt …. more confident giving that talk than I’ve ever felt in my life.

Mary Lou Sanelli’s newest book is A Woman Writing. See her book tour dates at marylousanelli.com.

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