I've mopped the floor with my pajama bottoms, retrieved a hair sample from a phantom refrigerator, discovered where the bread was kept by tenants-gone-by, and studied what my upstairs neighbor eats for supper. 72 hours in this little Minnesota river town has been nothing short of an adventure! On Tuesday I was greeted by the…

Thursday, October 19It's raining. Well, it's precipitating. It's that indecisive kind of wetness that's too fine to aggregate into a raindrop. It hangs in the air thickly, loitering until one rogue cloud lets loose a deluge of seed drops that gather the wetness into falling rain. The kind of wetness that seeps in sideways, penetrating…

The repeated clickety-clack and gentle sway of the train coach rocked me nearly to sleep, but my eyes refused to close, staring wide at mountain faces rising so steeply that the sprouting tufts of green clinging to the cliffs appeared to be affixed by ancient magic alone. The nieble floated ethereally through the saddles and…