From the air, Thunder Bay looked like someone had cleared just enough forest to build a town, and the trees were waiting to take it back.
The plane banked over Lake Superior—a flat gray expanse that swallowed the horizon—and then we descended through clouds. There were trees. So many trees.
The airport was small. One baggage carousel. A Tim Hortons. AWelcome to Thunder Baysign featuring a moose that looked mildly concerned about tourism.
I collected my gear, found the rental car desk, and signed paperwork for a Corolla that smelled aggressively of pine air freshener. The woman behind the counter asked if I was here for hunting.
"Documentary," I said.
"About what?"
"Hockey. I think."
She handed me my keys, grinned, and said, "The Storm. My brother's wife's sister works in their office."
Outside, the cold hit hard. Not the damp chill of Chicago in October—drier, sharper, and with fewer buildings to break the wind.
The GPS guided me toward downtown, and the city began to assert itself. Brick buildings. Local businesses with hand-painted signs. A coffee shop called The Common Thread with a rainbow flag in the window.
It was smaller than I'd imagined. Not quaint—that was the wrong word.Handmade, maybe. Like someone had built each block based on intention rather than an algorithm.
I found The Drop on a corner, wedged between a Thai restaurant and a closed insurance office. The windows glowed. Even from the parking lot, I heard the noise—music and voices. It was the dull roar of people being happy together.
The Storm had won. I'd caught the last period on the radio, driving in—scrappy victory, overtime goal by someone named Hawkins.
I turned off the engine and sat.
The cold crept into the car immediately as my breath began to fog the windows.
Something prickled at the back of my neck. It was the moment before a shot—that held breath when you know something's about to happen, but you don't know what.
Get out of the car. Go inside. Do the job.
I grabbed my smaller camera bag and stepped out into the cold.
The air smelled like woodsmoke, fried food, and pine. The noise from the bar swelled as someone opened the door, spilling light and sound onto the sidewalk.
I started walking toward the entrance.
A distinctive sound stopped me.
Drifting from somewhere behind the building—muffled, off-key, but unmistakable—the opening notes of "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
And under it, stranger still: a dog, howling.
I followed the sound around the corner.
Later, I'd think about how different everything might have been if I'd just gone through the front door of The Drop. If I'd entered, ordered a drink, introduced myself to Rhett, and started the job the way a normal person would.
I didn't. I followed the music and the howling, hoping for a unique shot.
What I found:
A guy—mid-twenties, lean, the kind of person a camera finds, whether you point it at them or not. He knelt in a patch of dirty snow behind a dumpster, left over from Thunder Bay's first snowstorm of the season.
He wore orange Crocs. No socks, despite the temperature plunge. His cheeks were flushed pink, and his hair was a mess of brown that looked like it had lost a fight with a pillow.
He was holding a karaoke microphone. The cord dangled uselessly, with the plastic casing cracked along one side.
