Like a salmon returning upstream, suddenly I am the local expert, the one fluidly making headway through linguistic currents of regionalisms and code switching with a flash of my tail. Bathed again in English, my accent spreads my A's broader than ever, and my tonal color palette is richly restored. And there are so many inexplicable things to explain (the heater in the fridge; the one cook who avoids all eye contact and speech; the wolf hide being laundered in the washing machine; the popularity of sausage gravy and chicken strips; the Halloween skeleton now permanently seated at the trucker's table...).
Thankfully, Jean-François has swooned over Coldfoot's charms just as much as I hoped he would. Our old warped door that caught every time it opened was an opportunity to meet the shop guys and borrow a planer. Hours of industrial dishwashing are tempered by the indecipherable sassy flirtations of our Atlanta-belle hostess. And breath already caught by the cold catches again at the snowy mountains illuminated by the first beseeching rays of returning sunlight.
Salon Night is new to me but an intermittent tradition here. People read aloud, show a video or art project, and we share our responses. Last night we had a fair bit of poetry, a brief film with Carl Sagan, and a ghost story. There is no better day off than a long ski on fresh snow, unlimited free clam chowder, and debating the inherent limitations of signifiers while curled up on a giant bean bag in the dim glow of Christmas lights.
