Day 14.

It's snowing out again, which may or may not turn into rain. It's quite pretty mild out, so I guess we'll wait and see. The excitement!

I went into Cass Lake yesterday to pick up some stuff, and ended up having what turned into a half-hour conversation with Barb, the nice old lady who offered free samples at Teal's SuperValu. The thing about Teal's is that the employees there, in my experience, outnumber the shoppers by at least 3 to 1. So Barb and I chatted about Colorado for a while, and then I edged away and picked up some meat for more jerky, some more vegetables and other essentials (Old Dutch Dill Pickle chips).

There's a few tribal buildings in Cass, affliated with the Leech Lake reservation, and yesterday there were about a dozen people gathered there, protesting something. I didn't really understand what the specific target of the protest was, although there were several signs about "NO ELDRIDGE," but the gist was pretty clear: get the fuck off our land.

I'd never seen any sort of political activity by the Chippewa up here, so I found this pretty interesting. They should try to recruit my dad, the Republican with a tribal card that, he was pleased as punch to find, allows him to dump for free on the rez in addition to earning him free healthcare. Those lucky Indians!

I made a big batch of chili yesterday and prepped more beef for jerky, which I'll be popping into the oven to dry here shortly. I've got some cleaning and chore-type stuff to get done before Jeff gets here, but I'm not really begrudging myself the time away from the book, since I wrote until 4 in the morning. If I have time, I'll get some pictures up.