Looks like Emil backed me into a corner. A real dilemma. Sure didn't see that coming. Guess that's what happens when I let the characters talk for themselves. When I sit down to write I know where the boys are and what happened the day before. Then I point them in what seems the logical direction to move for the day. Then things happen. Sometimes it's about what I figured would happen. Sometimes it's a complete surprise. Like yesterday.
Obviously both Emil and Archie are me at different stages of my life. That Archie is fourteen, about the same age as my son Allan was when we first went to the Boundary Waters is no coincidence. That my dad died when I was three is also true. Emil is a composite of the adult men who passed through on the edge of my life. I chose what I liked from them and hope that I ended up in the ballpark.
The lakes traveled by Emil and Archie do exist. Me and Allan paddled them all. As does the unnamed one I'd like to get to someday. Pull up google earth and you can follow our route right down to the barely visible campsite on which I left the boys last night.
When I said Emil would sleep on it, I meant it. Dreams talk to him as they do me and everyone else. So I slept on it last night. And did have an appropriate dream.
Consider all these entries as part of a story that will be eventually interspersed with earlier Uncle Emil tales. Figure those tales could be told to Archie to fill in the gaps of an otherwise mundane happening. Above all this ain't no adventure story in the usual sense. My hope is that it'll be more like something that could actually happen to anyone in an everyday life.
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