Creative Misreading

       I just came upon the transcript of a microcassette recording I made while driving the U.S. West Coast and into Canada in 1999--


       This is what I read in a guidebook about Washington's Olympic Peninsula tonight:

             “The lower portion of the subalpine zone is covered by tourists.”

Wait a minute:

            “The lower portion of the subalpine zone is covered by forests.”

But then again, I’ve seen a lot of tourists lately covering a lot of everything.

       Creative misreading can also tell something of the truth.