Today, I met a scientist we’ll call Louise.  She was about 5′6″ tall, and her legs made up 2″ of that.  She smelled like a flooded urinal and a carton of cigarettes. Her graying hair was cut in a Farrah Fawcett haircut. She wore men’s work shoes, polyester pants, and a flowery, wrinkled blouse.

Having once lived in that elusive time warp known as “up North”, Louise was familiar to me. I once tried to write a collection of short stories from my time near the Canadian border, but there’s no such genre as true-stories-that-are-so-bizarre-and-surreal-that-no-one-would-believe-them.

There was the 17 year-old mother who said she’d rather have another baby than have to get a birth control shot.  The born-again Christian Amazon who had five kids by four different men and who thought tattoos and gays were evil, but who cornered me and tried to stick her tongue down my throat. A 40 year-old cafe owner who left his wife and three kids for an anorexic sixteen year old, who sat at the lunch counter in-between waiting tables in her cut-off jeans and knee-high gym socks, studying for her GED.

So many stories. I rented a house from a guy moving to Colorado. A few days after moving in, bank employees pulled into the driveway and let me know the house was in foreclosure.  There was a woman whose neck and ears were chronically covered with stains from her black hair dye. She told me her spirit name was Raven and she insisted on doing a psychic reading for me.  She was wrong about everything, but I still hold out hope that one day I’ll meet the dark-haired love of my life in a black, possibly green Jeep, that might also be a Chevy Tahoe or Ford Explorer.

I wasn’t short of my own craziness up North. I fell in love with a barracuda, and for a time was actually mesmerized by seeing myself being eaten alive.  After that, of course, I was fuck love, who needs it, I’m going to drown my sorrows in vats of sugar, and I did. I gained 50 pounds and started wearing black sweats so the coffee stains wouldn’t show. It was pathetic.

Which brings me, oddly enough, back to Louise.  She would be the antithesis of a happy exclamation point if one were to judge by appearances alone, but when we first met she was incredibly effusive.  She was great, thanks for asking!  It was such a beautiful day, wasn’t it?!!!  She was so EXCITED to discuss her plans!!!!!

We had our meeting, and as far as meetings go it was pleasant, but it really didn’t merit the peculiar enthusiasm expressed by Louise.  Afterward, when we went out for coffee, the pretense of  multiple verbal exclamation points was dropped. It turns out that Louise’s life really wasn’t any happier than mine or anyone else’s.  She had just adopted a hyper-happy pattern of speech that she thought put other people at ease.

Louise had no way of knowing that the chemistry between me and the exclamation point has always been somewhat uncomfortable.  In the realm of English punctuation, I’ve always seen the exclamation point as a wild-eyed preacher standing on a street corner, waving its happy, dotted rod like a Joel Osteen erection, while drawling seductive words like beautiful! incredible! amazing!

Admittedly, there have been times I wished that the sparks between the exclamation point and I would fly.  I’ve seen some pretty cool people say things like  “That is so AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” with absolutely no hint of self-consciousness or sarcasm.  I’ve wanted to join them, but if using one dotted erection leaves me feeling slightly bashful, using several makes me feel like an imposter who’s trying too hard. I understand this makes me something of a punctuation prude.  It might be nice if I loosened up occasionally and just went wild with this convenient piece of grammatical ass.

As it happens, on the drive home from meeting Louise, I was  questioning  my frigid feelings towards excessive exclamation points, and revisiting my wild years up North, when I was suddenly struck by how much I hate trees.

I hate the trees in Minnesota. Not a little, but a lot.  They’re fucking everywhere. There’s no escape from the giant oaks, wide maples, and imposing boxelders. There are fields and fields of trees, often standing mere inches apart  . . . endless acres of crowded trunks, thick and spindly, with gnarled branches and continuously falling leaves.  Unlike the Sierra and redwood forests I once loved, these trees don’t seem at all majestic. Instead they look like bad planning — like orphans left to mindlessly procreate and suffocate each other.

They dull the sun and obscure the view, and the sheer number of them makes it hard to appreciate what otherwise might be interesting, unique, or beautiful.  In this way, trees, I think,  are like nature’s exclamation points. And Minnesota has way too many of them.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I prefer the neat rows of palm trees in Southern California, or the leafless evergreen pines of Tahoe, or the dignity of Northern redwoods that insist on having their own space even in a crowd.  Even the rolling, prickly sagebrush of the Nevada desert is more appealing to me than the haphazard and overly-exclamatory trees of Minnesota.

Many people claim to love the wilderness. They are excited about Outdoors! Nature! Ruggedness! I wonder where the bodies are buried. They see Wildlife! Bears! Eagles!!! I see round-bellied crows feeding off of carcasses. They delight in the trees. Birch! Willows! White Ash! I feel anxious about not being able to see what’s on the horizon.

Kristine sat at the counter in her cut-off jeans and gym socks, dirty sneakers dangling from the stool, biting her lip and twirling her hair as she studied the geography of places she’d never see. . .

After the reading, Tammie/Raven took a deep breath and closed her eyes as if my future was exhausting, even to her. I tried to suppress my laughter, but the Avon catalog was still on the table, and my pockets were full of tiny test tubes of lipstick and Timeless Ultra cologne. . .

The baby was shirtless in October, splotches of M&M colors covering his chest as he sucked on a faded blue bottle filled with Sprite. . .

His voice rose as he repeated his request that I borrow him a big. A what? I asked. A BIG!!! he screamed. I asked him to write it down.  Oh, a bag.  Well, he replied, dat’s what I sayd a doozen times, ain’t it?

Minnesota has been my wilderness.  A land without a foreseeable horizon.  There are too many trees here, too many exclamation points, and too many strange stories.  I need the neatness of a valley to lay everything out in — I need to be able to see for miles ahead — I need sunshine to dry out and cure my memories.

California! Tahoe! Santa Monica! Santa Cruz!  It’s still a long ways off, but in the meantime I’m peering through the shadows of trees, imagining once again feeling like a friendly native in a land of diverse freaks I’m comfortable with and who speak the same language.  And sure, California probably invented the exclamation point (as well as the word awesome) but much like bronzer and belly button rings  Californians just wear them better.