a little coffee

Apparently, today I was rather scandalously dressed for itty bitty foresty Cable. As I crossed the street to the Forest Lodge Library (founded in 1925, it’s the oldest log cabin library in Wisconsin) an 80 year-old woman said to me “You’re wearing a swimsuit.”

Taken aback, I muttered “Uh yes uh.”  To think I was all prepared to nod and smile and say “hello” as these supposed polite and friendly people do here.

But no, I was not wearing a swimsuit.  I suppose she thought my simple, black sundress from Target was too thin to be anything but a swimsuit cover-up.  I was walking around the Northwoods with arms and legs exposed when everyone else wore jeans.  I know it gets down to the 30s hear at night, but it was sunny, hot and humid now and I just plain felt like wearing a dress!

It took about three seconds to circle the inside of the log cabin library, a small place that made me think “cute” and “charming” as did many other of the shops and restaurants around town. Cute and charming like log cabins and tiny villages are- I think because it triggers that idealized nostalgia- a wistful sense for the supposed simpler times of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.  All you needed was your wits and an ax before that was lost to a world of concrete and global warming.

That’s an easy leap for your imagination when staying in an area where soaring pine trees claustrophobically block the view of everything and you continuously hear birds twittering while squirrels chuck pine cones at you and the towns you slow down to 25 to get through consist of two buildings- the bar and the single residence.