No specific complaints about my sixteen mile trek from Arkaic yesterday… well, I guess I could complain that it was cold out, but I’ve got to expect that. It’s winter, after all. It was a shrill, blustery day as I crossed the expressway overpass, and maybe the expressway is the reason why I’m traveling. An interstate is a port, filled with people coming, going, moving, in motion, to and from exotic places. Okay, so mostly from somewhere between Flint and South Bend, but there are some further travelers.
The wind up there was stronger and sharper than I felt it anywhere else, yesterday, before or after.
I’m sure I’ll get nostalgic about Arkaic in the weeks to come (because I do think this voyage is going to take me some weeks, at least). But for the moment, I’m just ready to go. I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve been here for too long. I’ve got to get going. I followed the icy tracks on East Street until I got out of town. From then on, it was all stony road shoulders and birch and pine trees. After about three hours I got to Livingston County and not too long after that I got to Fowlerville on Grand River Ave., just as the sun was going down (I guess, cloud cover) and everything started to turn gray and purple.
Fowlerville is bigger than I expected it to be. I had heard it was a speck, but it’s a small stone, at least. And it was quiet that evening, with the cold and the wind whipping about. The outskirts of the town looked metallic and provisional, like it had just been set up recently, even though I know that this town is as old as most of the bigger cities in Michigan. But downtown there were several blocks of graced old brick buildings, some of them empty but all pretty well kept-up. I’ll probably be passing through a lot of small towns that look like this.
When I got to Chris’ house on 2nd Street, I was ready for a break. He was asking me about Jasmine and my walk, why I’m taking it… “just getting restless,” I said, but there are other reasons I didn’t tell him of course. I fell asleep (accidentally!) for about a half-hour in the chair there, but then he poked me and offered to treat me to dinner. I thought that sounded good, so we got take out Chinese and put on the Matrix. I didn’t feel like staying up long after that. Today’s even colder and I have to make it all the way to Bancroft in Shiawasee County.
What is this?
It’s an experiment!
Not too long ago I finished compiling a multiyear project: a list of the places I’d like to live before I die. Now I’m busy here in Flint raising a family, keeping a house, and launching a writing career; there’s no way I’m going to have the chance to visit most of these places. So instead, I’m sending one of my characters on the trek for me. Crystal Galitz was a character from my unfinished novel Urbantasm which I drafted in 1996-1997. I’m still working on Urbantasm sixteen years later, but that can’t stop me from drafting Crystal to explore the world and report her findings. Let it be known that Crystal set out from her childhood home of Arkaic, Michigan on January 2nd, 2012. She’ll share her discoveries and adventures through the power of technology and the magic of imagination. We’ll see what she has to say.