duffel bag and backpack and unzipped them. As I squatted, with shoulder blades still pointing at the water, my hands stirred through both pieces of luggage, as if conducting a sofa-cushion investigation on the shore of Lake of the Woods.
smashed granola bar ^__ still package for good eatin'. Torn book pages ^__ despite the fact I hadn't touched the pages or the book. Wadded-up underwear. But no jingle or jangle. "If a man were to misplace his car keys in the middle of the woods," I thought, "would he care?"

It had been three days since the keys were packed away. Kneeling there in the dirt, beard growth chafing against both shoulders, sweat matting hair more firmly against scalp, I could only laugh at my own pitiful presence. "OK," I told myself. "If they're not in here, then they're out there." In other words, behind me, in the lake, along the mega-boundary between western Ontario and Northern Minnesota, somewhere among more than 14,000 islands and 1,500 square miles of water. Under normal circumstances, rummaging for keys while running late for a flight would make the capillaries in my temples turn to large curds. but crouched on this perfectly named wedge of the earth, I had not a dollop of urgency to transition back to the freeway of