They lived rootless. Time suspended. They had come to an unknown realm, another country, a strange region, where what they did was who they were, each day, all summer long; they were canoe scouts, they built teepees, collected berries; they barbecued salmon and swam in the lake. It was as if their present life had no connection to their previous one, except for some wounds and a few abstract reflections. Retro-crap, as someone put it at the campfire.
There was little distraction. They inflated every rumor. And if the rumors fizzled out, they invented new ones, or they enriched the old ones with new facts, and it was impossible to find out what was true in all the gossip. They had gotten used to it. It didn’t bother anyone when Svenja, the camp boss, complained about Ralf. When he got his hunting license, she said she was certain he’d had humans in front of a gun barrel in his lifetime. Behind her back, they asked how Ralf could get along with somebody like Svenja.
They lived rootless; they tried to make the best of it.
~ Antje Rávic Strubel, Colder Layers of Air
+