We are the only one on the whole campground and contact is quickly made. The next thing I know, is that I am sitting behind K when we drive his ATV over some back country dirt roads to the nearest bar. It’s a bar were everybody knows everybody, the tvs are tuned to football and the talk is about hunting. You know, just a random small town bar in the middle of Minnesota.
At night around the campfire K invites me to hang around for a couple of days so he can show me what lives about around here. An offer I happily accept. K and some family owe some land in the nearby town, land not to live on, but to live from. And that’s were he takes me. We clean out the hunting trailer, mow the grass and call it home for a couple of days in the middle of the woods.
Archery deer hunting season opening is this weekend, and with the ATV we drive through the forest to check out all the deer stands. Hunting here is done from stands attached to a tree and with hours of patient waiting a wondering by deer will be taken out for food. I don’t know about this.
Trained in the army, K does not just owe a bow and arrow. There are many weapons and I have no clue what is coming by. I get to shoot a shotgun and K shows me the technique on all the others. I still have a hard time to be around weapons and will never appreciate them.We go for a swim in a nearby lake to shake of the heat. I do understand that I can not swim in underwear on a public beach, but why I can not change on the beach is still unclear to me. For now, I just follow Ks directions and feel like a town boy in his swim pants and a T-shirt.
In the course of these days I am meeting cousins, uncles and grandparents. A grandma I haven’t even met gives me a beautiful handmade rug, an uncle shows me his vegetable garden and his canned food, a cousin stumbles late at night into my bedroom to meet me. When I crash a football party at an uncle, a person I have never met knows I took a nap yesterday at 5 o’clock. People know I am in town and make me feel more then welcome in this community. It’s a weird experience, because I don’t even like small towns. I like to be incognito in a big city, or alone in the back country, where nobody knows when I sleep or what I do. 
Its relax time, and with some family we take the car out for a drive around the country side. In the middle of know where, we meet more family and with the usual booze we eat hamburgers and French fries. We hit another bar and play some pool. We are for sure not the only one in the bar, and not having seen any bicycle at the door, I can only imagine how everybody goes home. Being religious, something I really do not understand, and voting republican, I am an Obama fan and vote far left in NL, I have not much in common with K. But how else can I respect somebody who owns his own company, who takes care of his mom, who is a sweetheart. K is happy in his way and that’s way more important then what I think about it. And to be honest, I even really like him.
Dag,
Iris (Menahga, 19173 miles)
