Mufflehead is the locally applied nickname for a nonstinging, mosquitolike insect that plagues the lake region every June. We were still in our clothes and dress shoes from the wake. I carried Shelly in both hands, while Gordon walked with the boom box on his shoulder like an eighties “beat boy,” searching for a flat slab of concrete and a clean piece of cardboard. After only a few steps, our socks were dew drenched, our feet were soaking wet, and our ears, eyes, and noses were filled with insects. The faux-leather uppers of my Shoe Warehouse loafers were becoming unglued and beginning to separate from their soles. And although it was still too dark to identify species, every few footsteps sent an unhappily roused critter scurrying or slithering out of our path. The route to the Ottawa campsite would take us past the airstrip (all the inhabited islands had a similar runway for small planes; it was the only way to get to or from some of the islands during the winter months once the lake froze and the private boats and commercial ferries were dry-docked) before dead-ending on the north coast of the island near what had been the short-lived self-proclaimed sovereign outpost of the Ottawa Nation.
