SHANNON HAS AGREED TO buy my house. I’ve inspired him to finally get out of the town we grew up in and move away. Only, he’s moving twenty miles and I’m moving two hundred. Again. Hopefully for the last time.
Basil will be staying here.
I love him, I really do, but he’s a country dog. He loves walks in the woods and running through fallen leaves and chasing other animals. He loves Geshig, and because Shannon works there he’ll be there a lot, even during work hours.
Maybe Basil is just like me. He was born in this town and even though something brought him away, he went back and enjoyed it. I could’ve enjoyed so much more about Geshig though.
Year-round events that I’ve taken for granted now seem like major attractions. In February, Lake Anders has an Eelpout Festival where men and women will get drunk, go ice fishing, and catch the ugly eelpouts that are the namesake of the reservation. Sometimes they’ll even kiss them. In late spring, there’s a 5K on the Tamarack Walk that pays out great prizes for the winners, not that I’d ever place, but I could’ve challenged myself.
There’s a barbecue festival in the middle of summer when the sun is turning everyone’s skin as red as the pots of chili for the annual cook-off. There’s various powwows for the different holidays: Fourth of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day—and those are always good for fried food, maybe some hominy and wild rice soup.
But that’s not the Geshig that I knew in the last few years of being here.
The day I move away, and Shannon and I exchange nothing but a handshake to transfer ownership of house and dog, I don’t take the highway on the south end of Half Lake to get down to the cities. I take a detour home and visit the park one last time. It’s still just a park.
I walk to the painted silo where I used to take part in the community garden in elementary school. The tradition is still carried on, but right now the plots are covered with the first blankets of November snow.
For just a moment, I consider walking back to the spot where the merry-go-round used to be. Ever since Kayden left, I have felt a strange incompleteness that I think will only be solved by finally leaving. I would stay if just one more time I could go to that merry-go-round and remember everything about why I came back, why I used to love it here.
But it’s better to wake up than fall back asleep in a town with no dreams.