A quote from the first chapter in the book I started after work today:

I cut through the parking lot behind the student union toward the north end of campus. The bluff showcases a gorgeous panoramic view of the St. Marys River, the International Bridge into Canada, and the city of Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario.

Yes. I have walked this walk early so many times. I walked it from my parents’ house up on the escarpment, the one they moved to when I was in college. It is SPECTACULAR when you happen to hit it when the sun comes up. Even if it’s still dark, the lights from the locks and bridges to Canananada are gorgeous and if you are lucky there may be a freighter going through.

Once, post-911 / pre-COVID, I arrived at the locks park as a freighter was going through. (It might’ve been the freighter in the pic – a salty – but not sure.) The locks had opened for the year at midnight and it was dark when I got there at 7:00 AM. I approached the person on duty at the “guard house” saying, “I’m your first tourist!” They looked at me like I was nuts. I showed that all I was carrying was my iPhone and they waved me on in. What a world we are forced to live in these days.

So I became aware of the book “Firekeeper’s Daughter” last fall and it finally dropped this week. I rather laboriously plodded through my last book and jumped on to download this one today. I don’t know the author personally but she grew up in Sault Ste. Marie (Michigan) and the surrounding areas and I think some of my yooper friends actually have met her.

This is a YA fiction book and I am loving it. Yes, when you drive south of town, you turn left at the Dairy Queen corner to get to the middle and high school. Except I only went to that high school the last two years of my public school career. Before that, I walked “downtown” across the canal on the Johnston Street bridge. Man that was a cold walk when the temps were well below zero.

More on this when I finish it with the caveat that I am not Native American in any way shape or form and so I can’t begin to understand all of the context surrounding the issues discussed in this book. I grew up there but I come from a WASPy type family.

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