The Great White North

I’ve just got off the plane in Spokane. Good God flying is a pain in the ass. I walked out of the stuffy plane do a river of water falling from the sky. In New Mexico we call it rain, here they just call it everyday. I stepped off the plain and into an atmosphere so thick with air I felt like I could chew. That what going from 6,000’ above sea level to damn near close to it will do to you. I immediately noticed when I reached the terminal, other than that I had grossly miscalculated the weather, how absolutely white everyone is. And I don’t mean white strictly by the color of skin but something more, deeper I guess. This is small town America. I gaze around me while I wait for Rachel to hurry up and get here and almost everyone has that dumpy, meat and potatoes look you would expect to find in rural Kansas. The kind of look that, if you’re from a city as ethnically diverse as Albuquerque, is actually startling and strange to see. Of course the north was settled largely by Scandinavians who upon landing somewhere in the middle of the east coast, a temperate climate, decided that this was just to normal, and headed inland. And as they traveled they drank, as is the custom for Finns’ or Danes’ or whatever, and as they drank they started to drift slightly to the right eventually ending up in the north. When they finally got here and realized that it more than slightly resembled home I’m sure the women were happy and the husbands were pissed.
“Ingrid, Why did we come all this way, uproot the children and family, spend what little life savings we had and travel hundreds of thousands of miles for the same crappy climate we left?" They would say.
“Calm down Sven, at least theirs plenty of pine for a cabin. We can make it just the same!”
He dreaming of sipping Mai Thais’ with scantily clad natives in Florida, she’s making a pine wreath for the door.
“This is not what the brochure promised.”

People of the north are resilient and loyal, because they have to be. Or rather had to be to survive, and its still holding on from the age of gold rushes and Indian wars (a group would have had to stick together) to the new era of Wal-Marts and KFC. And I kind of like that. You get the feeling everyone has got your back, as opposed to feeling like you have to watch it. But it cold, and I’m not prepared for it. When I left Albuquerque it was going to be 100 degrees, It 51 and raining and all I brought was one light sweater. I guess I should have checked the weather. Ill Just have to suck it up and deal. Welcome to the great white north…