As with all love stories, there will always be some weird shit that goes down when it comes to public transportation. Stuff that you try to ignore, to look past and try to not think about because, after all, there are some perks of relationships like these. It’s the homeless dude who thinks he is an Air Force One commander, talking to an imaginary walkie-talkie on his chest, or the old woman who talks to herself while scribbling on crossword puzzles. For all intents and purposes, these situations can be compared to the first time your boyfriend farts in front of you. It’s awkward, almost inevitable, and something that usually goes ignored and undiscussed for the sake of….something, not sure what exactly. But you stick around because you really like him and he makes you breakfast sometimes. You see, there are pros and weird, smelly cons in any situation, sometimes it just takes more effort to find the pros. In short, if I have to endure some dude talking to himself in a Russian accent in the bus seat next to me so I can get to my point B quicker, so be it.

In May, I rode a train from Chicago to Seattle. As far as people watching is concerned, this is like the fucking Real World of public transport. You’re stuck in a train for three days with people you don’t know and for the most part don’t care to know. There are all sorts of people who are ready and willing to talk to you about their grandkids and how little Tommy ‘really like cows and wants one for a pet.’ I had a Chinese man sit next to me and snore for like six hours. I ate pancakes with an obese Christian missionary who was handing out Jesus’ word as if every pamphlet he gave to some unsuspecting victim was saving a voodoo orphan or something. I met a couple – the husband was wearing a clever ‘I Picked Jesus’ t-shirt, complete with a guitar pick and Jesus fish – who acted as my resident parents, handing out life advice like ‘Don’t go near the Indian reservation’ and ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ and ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ This was perhaps the final face-to-face parental influence that I would receive until my return to Michigan in September, and it amounted to advice on the best Wal-Marts in Washington and to not talk to Indians.

Now I stick to my daily bus ride. It’s just part of my schedule, not really something I look forward to or absolutely detest (however I usually reward myself by buying a donut when I get off). I’m usually too lost in the motley crew of random strangers that somehow find each other for this 10-minute transport from point A to point B to actually notice that I’m on a bus. There is always the college girl who is somehow still stuck in the 8^th grade gothic phase. She has headphones on, always, probably listening to bands with names like Cadaver or Jungle Rot. There are usually at least three homeless men, two old women in sunhats, four kids who are way too into their Smartphones, and the occasional elderly man who won’t stop giving you the stink eye. I compare these aspects of my bussing experience to the day you meet your boyfriends’ mom and she hates you, or the time you see your boyfriend eat three double cheeseburgers in less than five minutes, or the time you get in a fight because he got too drunk and puked on your porch.

But then there are the days on the bus when you sit next to someone and have a conversation (normal or bizarre, doesn’t matter), or the day you get the bus all to yourself, or the time you get the whole back row and just sprawl the fuck out. These are the picnics and drunk dances of public transportation. These are the peaceful walks and breakfasts in bed and bonfires on the beach. These are the camping trips where it doesn’t rain and the starry nights on top of your favorite hiking spot. This is where you lay in the sunshine and sit in the sand and enjoy the experience, or just stare excitedly out the emergency exit window, taking up all four back-row seats, thinking about what you’ll do when you get to your next stop. 

Every November, Nubs Nob Ski Area in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula faces a logistical nightmare.

By November 28^th, the Friday after Thanksgiving, most of the local high school population will be refreshing their Facebook homepage looking for those two divine words: Opening Day. And not only opening day, but also the Manna Food Project Rail Jam, which is one of just a handful of rail jams that occur in Michigan during the pre-season.

Yet contrary to what everyone thinks about the Northern Michigan climate come November, it is rarely synonymous with snow.

                  “It’s always up in the air for this event,” Nubs Nob Park Crew manager John Curtis said. “You don’t know what you’re going to get – we could have natural snow or we may have to go to the ice rink to get shavings because it’s just not cold enough to make any.

                  “There is a grey zone as far as snowmaking goes, and that’s where we’re at (in late November).”

That leaves about a fifty-mile radius surrounding Nubs Nob– near the tip of the mitt in the Lower Peninsula – with about 200 minors who want nothing more than to ski on a dirty patch of snow as big as their mom’s SUV.  

So every year, Curtis and the snowmaking crew at Nubs Nob wait anxiously, along with every fluorescently dressed die-hard park rat in the area. They wait for that one necessary night, where the temperature dips to the holy number: 26 degrees.

At 26 degrees, man-made snow can be produced, churned from a metal pipe through a giant fan and made into the icy cousin of its light and natural counterpart that likely won’t come for another two weeks.

With just one of these nights occurring prior to Thanksgiving, opening on Black Friday was out of the question for the managers at Nubs.

But Curtis, who came to Nubs in 2008 to help with the terrain park, knew he had enough to set up at least a couple features, which is more than enough to make some desperate teenagers happy.

                  “It was basically just an all-night run on snowmaking to pile up as much as we could for the kids,” he said. “That being said, we didn’t know how many people were actually going to be there due to the inclement weather.”

                  Last season, the Rail Jam coincided with opening day at Nubs, which meant more riders, more spectators, and essentially more money raised for the sponsor of the event – Manna Food Project. This season, regardless of it being opening day or not, the event still drew over 100 skiers and snowboarders.

“It was really unexpected that we had a hundred people,” Curtis said. “The lifts weren’t on, it hadn’t been cold in a week and people just weren’t really thinking about riding at the time.”

The weather was a slushy 55 degrees, which was expected after a rainy Thanksgiving. The participants had to hike to take runs, and Curtis and fellow park-crew member Charlie Hoffman had to pause the event every hour to keep the features in reasonable condition.

“I thought we were going to end up with a lower number, but it really just goes to show that people will do anything to ski pre-season – especially when it’s got a good association with it like the Manna Food project.”

                  In order to compete, the riders had to bring either five cans or five dollars for the Manna Food Project – a food bank located in Harbor Springs.

                  Nubs eventually opened for the season on Dec. 10, but the chance to get out on the hill – even if only on three inches of snow – was more than alluring to a number of kids and even families.

                  Since a large portion of the competitors at the event were under the age of 12 – some even struggling to carry their skis and boards up the hill and instead electing to pet dogs or stay close to mom – it wasn’t surprising to see a number of parents on the sidelines.

                  One family, the Taperts, travelled four hours north from Rochester for just a couple hours on the hill. The three Tapert brothers – Bayden (six), Bryce (eight), and Beck (10) – were three of the youngest riders in the rail jam. Bryce was dressed much like his older freesking peers, wearing a full cyan blue outfit, and managed to land switch off the flat down box. After watching him receive a sticker from Curtis earlier in the day, it was obvious that this kid just had the best day of his short-lived existence. 

The event drew families and competitors from not only the Rochester area, but also areas as far south as Grosse Point and Chicago. Some came from as far north as Marquette (a four-hour drive) and Sault Ste Marie, Can. (not as long of a drive, but Canada nonetheless). Mike Hornbeck – a professional Michigan freeskier from Kalamazoo – also took a couple laps at the event after driving up from his family gathering in southern Michigan. His latest film appearance, in Level 1 Productions’ After Dark, premiered in the Nubs Nob cafeteria after the rail jam.

But, aside from the sloppy Joes and curly fries that the cafeteria sold during the event and subsequent video premier, Nubs hardly made a profit from the pre-season jam. So what was the motivation behind making only enough snow for two down rails, a barrel and a couple boxes?

“We operate at Nubs with the idea that skiing and snowboarding are a lifestyle,” Curtis said. “So to get young kids out early (in the season) and to give them a positive influence – making sure they’re getting stickers and getting products and chatting with the older kids – it’s a way to make sure that we’re continuing positive growth in our sport.”

“I think that’s important – getting the kids out there and putting them in front of positive people and showing them how great of a time it is.”

The sky is a striking citrus color, like red grapefruit or an orange. Close to home, far from the city – this is where the world ends. Which is okay. It ends amongst the deciduous forests, behind the miles and miles of hills and oaks and pines and rock, glacier-made bogs and an enormous lake. I wish that the world would end when I am here - with the setting sun. With the pressures of an entire world upon me, a wall of sunlight and heat press down on me, set on me, push me out of the way as if nothing happened – as if the end of the world didn’t want me.

            But don’t look at the colors, the imposing, fearless sky. Don’t look at the quick setting sun. Look at the ground, the roads and poles below the rocky, rugged terrain. Look at the man-made lakes which are grey and clouded, like the sky should be. Eroded and dying – it is eternal. The sky will be lurid and bright, the end of the world will be striking. It will be a dream, the sky.

Four months time – the lifespan of an adult dragonfly; the amount of time it takes grey whales to migrate from the Bering Sea to the coast of California every winter; the time at which human babies begin to recognize familiar faces. In four months, 807, 904 will die in the United States.

It’s a short amount of time. In my life, four months means a season, a semester, 121 days of whatever gets thrown my way.

My dad’s dad spent 51 years drinking coffee with friends before work. They sat in the back right corner of the Trading Post. They shot the shit, talked about how business was, about plumbing fixtures and their wives. I was lucky enough to sit in on some of these elusive old-men-drinking-coffee conversations, observing the interactions that as an eight-year old girl I would never fully understand.

In over half of a century, my grandpa met a lot of people. He installed a lot of toilets. He knew a lot about how to treat customers, about water heaters, about how to keep me busy in a plumbing shop for hours on end.

I would come to the shop often, offering in my innocent age to sweep or wash windows out of boredom. I liked the environment, the feeling that I was apart of something beyond my few years. When all else failed, I would ask Frank – the sort of secretary/janitor/chit-chatter of the whole operation – to show me where they were hiding the surplus of bubble wrap that came on the water heaters. He’d always show me, assuring me that if I told my dad where I got it, he’d make me mop the floors with him until I was old enough to know better.

By the time I was 18, my dad had taken over the family business. My grandma’s near 53-year long position as secretary and undisputed female badass had ended. My grandpa retired in every sense of the word, dispersing his now completely-stress free life between mowing the lawn, polka on PBS and napping in his Lazy Boy.

My grandpa met and married my grandma two years before the business opened. That makes 53. 53 years that they spent together. That’s incomprehensible to me. More than double the life I have lived. By 53, I will have kids, a husband, a 401k, and hopefully a kick-ass garden. In 53 years, I’m probably either going to be dead or experiencing some sort of global meltdown. I can only imagine.

Yet it’s remarkable what four months – just 16 weeks – can hold. I recall the summer after my senior year – a four-month period – the summer after my grandpa had died. I remember walking through sunshine drenched fields near his house that I have played in since I was old enough to venture alone. I remember spending the nights with my grandma, who was still recovering from the loneliness. I remember helping with lawn work, and avoiding driving my car on the lawn despite all obvious convenience for fear of eternally pissing him off.

When I was in middle school, I would invite friends over and we would wreak havoc on that house. We would hijack the golf cart in the garage and put tire marks all over the lawn in an attempt to find secret trails in the woods. We wouldn’t find trails, but he would find our tracks. His anger typically ended in a glass of prune juice and going to bed at 8:30, much to the relief of my friends who had feared his 6’6 frame and intimidating persona.

In the morning, he would wake up as he had done for the past 50-some years and go get coffee with his friends. However in July of one seemingly long summer, he died. He had succumbed to liver cancer that had taken hold on Easter of that year. He wouldn’t eat. It took only four months for the disease to overpower him.

            His coffee buddies carry on. Only one left ahead of him. His name was Jim, a good-ole blue-collar boy before retiring to Northern Michigan. Now there is Ken, the owner of the grocery store in my small hometown, and many others.

In the early years – 1954, 55, 56 – I wonder what kind of conversations happened over daily coffee. Three of the regulars were just opening their own businesses, all three of which still thrive today. My grandpa – the only plumber in town for nearly thirty years; Ken – owner of the only grocery store Indian River has ever seen; Emory – founder of the first real estate business in town.

For years, the coffee buddies stuck around. For years, the same customers frequented the store, looking for a new faucet or some PVC tubing, advice on what to do about that broken toilet, a conversation with my half-deaf-but-always-willing-to-listen grandfather.  

            And in just four months, all was gone of a fifty-year legacy. The guys lost one of the original coffee companions, certainly just one death of many to come. 

This is a rough draft for a flash fiction assignment for one of my writing classes. Flash fiction is essentially the (leather?) mini skirt of fiction writing, typically rounding out under 800 words. But I kind of suck at making shit up and therefore this is pretty much non-fiction.

This place is called Afton. It’s the kind of place where trophy bucks hang over kitchen tables, and where Confederate flags plaster the windows of every Dodge Ram within village limits.

It’s the place where I first watched a rabbit get skinned, only to hesitantly watch it get turned to stew a short time later. It’s where I first saw a full-sized bull elk as it approached the plexi-glass window of the 4 X 4 foot hunting blind I was sitting in. It’s where I caught my first bass, in these lakes, and my first trout, in these rivers.

It’s where I first saw a bear, as it emerged over a hill in these dense, deciduous woods. It’s where I’ve kayaked until my hands blistered, in these floodings and ponds, at all hours of the day, watching the sunrise over those treetops to the east. I found myself in Afton.

            In ten years, this place will be different. The dilapidated gas-station over there will be torn down at the claws of an enormous piece of machinery, and then quickly rebuilt into a large log-cabin style building. It will have ceiling fans and tile floors and two separate bathrooms. It will sell packaged sandwiches, sandwiches that were once made at the hands of my aunt, but are now made by the limbs of a machine, by steel and aluminum. It will have a restaurant next door, maybe a hotel even, and people from the rural towns nearby will come in for its fish fry every Friday night. There will be knick-knacks and stuffed animals and ‘Welcome to our Cabin’ signs for sale. They will serve coffee in Styrofoam cups, and sell gas and worthless souvenirs to tourists who are merely passing by to see the rags-to-riches boomtown.

            In ten years, the soil beneath the trees will feed this town – energy, endless lights and power and electricity. And the nearby towns too. And soon, the state. Just give it some time, and Afton will be big, bigger than when the logging companies came in the early 1900’s, bigger than the towns that surround it. Bigger than it’s prior population of 400. Bigger than my hometown, which sits ten miles away. 

            In just a short time, this ground will be cracked – like an egg, drained of its yolk, it’s life. It will be corrupted, sucked of life. This soil which once provided my family – my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents – with food, will be poisoned, degraded, used. It will be penetrated by converging metal, by machinery and pipes – its natural state of being polluted. This soil will no longer feed these rural communities that once relied so heavily upon it.

            These pristine waters, home to the biggest rainbow and brook trout populations in the state, will shrivel and become polluted with the contamination of greed, naivety, and error. Those who once used this water to cook, bath, drink will be told not to use it as it is. They will anyways, because it has always been their lifeline, and always will be.

            The carpet of the general store, which was once eroded by the muddy boots of hunters, fishers, truck drivers and farmers, will be replaced with tile. At the end of the day, after the usuals make there way to the coffee machine, past the pop coolers and finally to the sanitized, graphite counter, the clerk will mop up the tracks made by those boots. And it will be a clean, industrialized, energy-obsessed world.

The picture at top is Cornwall Floodings, the heart of Pigeon River Country near Afton, Michigan.