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When I got home from work that night, my mom was reading the local paper and caught my attention as I walked by. �Did you hear?� She asked, �There�s a pelican down at the waterfront. They think it got lost in a storm or something and found its way here.�

That night I remember dreaming of birds. Pelicans and other creatures that had no right flying around on breezes that smelled of big water but lacked the tang of salt.

I was so intrigued that the next morning, I drove down to the waterfront to get a look at this poor lost soul who went to bed on the ocean and woke up in Oz. It was another in a long line of beautiful days, and the seas, such as they were, were relatively calm. I walked out on the break wall that protected the vessels that docked at the marina. There were other people out there as well, hoping to get a look. I walked out to the end of the wall where the electric lighthouse sat, and stood next to an old gentleman who was talking to a neighbor of mine. He was telling her about the summer of 1953, when the same thing had happened; a pelican flew off course or stowed away in a freighter, and ended up on the Harbor Springs pier, the city across the bay. That story though, had a bad ending. After several weeks of begging fish off of marina fishermen, a storm blew in suddenly, sweeping in from the Upper Peninsula, and the pelican disappeared. It was found a week later, washed up on shore near Menonequa, never to find its way home.

Disheartened a little by the story, we were silent for a while, standing there at the end of the breakwater and scanning the water and the docks for the bird. After about ten minutes, a woman with binoculars gave a shout and pointed out toward the mouth of the Bear River, where it fed into the lake. There it was. The pelican was skimming the water there and generally startling the crap out of the fishermen casting from the rocks on the shore.

On land, pelicans are awkward birds, all beak and feet and look, most of the time, as if it takes most of their concentration to not tip over. A pelican in the air, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. They�re graceful and agile, and commanding of respect. And there against the endless blue backdrop of the open water, the pelican looked at home. If you didn�t know any better, you wouldn�t think twice about seeing it there.

Eventually, it skimmed to a halt in the water not far from us, and dunked its head under once, shaking it as soon as it surfaced, as if puzzled and little put-off that this water wasn�t quite right.

How odd it must have been for that poor bird, in a bizzaro world where everything looked right but didn�t taste it, and weren�t quite as buoyant as you expected to be.

Over the course of that summer, the pelican hung around the bay, fished, and made a few friends out of locals and tourists alike. That fall, people began to notice the pelican�s absence and it was eventually thought to have either died or left the area. I like to think that he found an air current that blew east, and rode it until he made it home.

Looking back, I now feel an odd kinship with that pelican, living in a place that looks right, but feels off, and feeling as though I�m not really equipped to handle my current environment.

Like that pelican, I�m surviving, but for how long? Will I make it back home? Do I even want to? I have great friends here, and I�m getting by, but if I found that current that could carry me east, would I take it?

I hope, like him, that I�ll figure it out.

�I wanted to be rescued, too. I was tired of being brave and semi-competent.� �Janet Evanovich, To The Nines