The trip is off to an infuriating start because for the third in as many months I’ve been in a situation where law enforcement officers make defamatory accusations of no merit.
The one Saturday night was the worst, and could have lasting repercussions. First night of the trip, camped in a state forest campground on my way north, sleeping, after midnight, suddenly somebody tells me to come out of my tent. If they said they were cops it was the first thing out and I slept through it and don’t remember. I ask what for, and one of them repeats the command except adds, “lemme see your hands.”
Initially, I thought I was being robbed, but even without contacts and with Mag-lites pointed in my face, was able to identify them as police, Lake County Sheriff’s deputies. One of them said their bloodhound (it appeared to be a goofy little Cocker Spaniel, but I can’t see much without contacts though still enough to see it was no hound) had tracked directly to my tent from a car that had been entered and rifled through.
They kept their flashlights in my eyes and disbelieved most everything I said. Then I sat at the picnic table shivering in long underwear while the deputy ran my license and the dog handler trained his light on me. Later I moved into the squad SUV and talked with the deputy, telling him repeatedly what I’d been doing before going to bed. He still believed that stupid dog over me.
“I’ve seen him work before,” he said, and added how the dog used signals to show he was smelling me. That was the most frustrating, because there I was telling him in plain English that he was blaming the wrong dude, but to no avail. He would file the report with the county prosecutor, who may decide to summon me to court, all the way up in Two Harbors.
The first of the three happened in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. My friend Barn, his girlfriend Jessica and I reached the park entrance at about 6:30 for a quick peek, the park was to close at 7. The ranger at the entrance booth said in an it’s-all-good sort of tone that we could stay past dark (sunset was around 7), just to be careful of antelope on the road while leaving. About a half hour after close I was making a photo and heard shouting. A ranger was yelling at us to get up where he was and don’t discard the rocks we were supposedly stealing.
A second ranger showed. She called me a liar when I told her what the first ranger had said about staying past dark. They searched our pockets and Barn’s car. Jessica had a bottle cap she’d picked off the ground that the fresh ranger actually confiscated. They let us go with a warning.
The second run-in was a couple of weeks ago. I went to pick up my wife Lily’s friend, Gugu, at the airport. Gugu was flying in from India to take an exam and visit. I waited while customs interrogated her for four hours. She had a proper visa and paperwork, but they accused her of planning to work illegally, of intending to marry an American for citizenship “like her friend” (we later joked the security man was proposing to her). They demanded her computer passwords and read her email and chat room transcripts. They called Lily, who was seeing a patient at the hospital, and threatened that unless she talked to them at that very moment they would send Gugu back to India and ban her from the U.S. for five years. They called me and her uncle in Virginia. At three and a half hours in I called them and a man denied she was still in custody. A half hour later she was finally out bedraggled and hurt.
As for now, I’m in Grand Marais at least through the night. I’m staying with my old friend Adam Gallagher who is living on the beach in a camper. The spot is okay with its abundant wildflowers surrounding much of the camper, the expanse of polished cobblestones leading to the lake and the morning sun burning like a red ball over an unseen Michigan every clear morning.
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