The last time I was in this room (a small auditorium) in early March 2020, social distancing wasn’t quiiiiite a thing yet but it was on the horizon. I was “happy birthday washing” my hands every time I used the water closet but NOBODY was wearing a mask and I’m pretty sure the social distancing thingy was not there.

I sat in the very front of this room that day to watch a presentation and a guy sat down RIGHT next to me and even edged his chair over closer to mine. I’d’ve been TOTALLY freaked out except a woman was with him (his wife?). He then asked me if *I* was the presenter. Um, nope. Thankfully he inexplicably and unceremoniously LEFT moments after the presentation began. It kinda reminded me of the time a guy approached me at Kroger to ask if I was a “lady minister”.

I attended the symposium last year but didn’t attend any presentations. Still a bit covid averse. Today I attended three. A man who kayaked along the coast of Maine with its many islands. A very entertaining 84-year-old man presenting a wild slide show of his life, mainly focusing on his many canoe trips. All over the world, many in the arctic or far north. They were both wonderful but my favorite was probably the last one of the day, a quieter one about the ebb and flow of the moose and wolf populations on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I won’t try to repeat all the details but decades of research provided detailed population data and explained the sometimes surprising reasons for population changes. It was a *fascinating* look inside some very complicated science presented in a way that a baggy old kayak woman could understand.

Saturday of the symposium is a long day for me. We and several other North Country Trail chapters run a booth together. I am not a schmoozer and talking to random people about the trail exhausts me, especially the (thankfully few) “wise guys”. I do enjoy talking to our own trail folks and got closer to a few of those I didn’t know well today. A highlight was discovering that one of the guys (and his family) spent some time living on The Planet Ann Arbor and some of his kids attended the beach urchins’ elementary school. His kids are much younger than ours so we didn’t cross paths at the school but small world.

Dinner for 20 at Pizza House at the end of the day and now back at our fancy hotel suite for some downtime. The regular rooms are fancy enough but we were upgraded for some unknown reason.

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