Growing up, we didn’t refer to the tree-filled acres around our house as the forest. We called it the woods. So even though forests blanket other places and regions, to me it always sounds presumptuous to label our miles of northern Minnesota trees so grandly.
Anyway, I’m home in the Northwoods as I write and cannot decide whether ‘home in Minnesota’ blog posts should be considered part of the Decades series I claim to be writing or it’s just its own sentimental meandering. I decided.
Travel
Arrived on the 1st of July in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. My little ‘old’ brother’s birthday. The travel was smooth, in fact faultless; it felt so silly to have been dreading it. What was I imaging? ICE flooding the airports? People with babies and bundles fleeing north on the Duluth flight? Planes shabby and creaky staffed by cranky MAGAs, the pilots untrained but oh so white. Not really…but under the menacing sleaze at the top, it really is where a world of billionaires and the not-overly-intelligent power-mad leads us.
Happily, not yet though. Everything about my Delta airlines flight on July 1, 2026 was flawless, as good as it gets in terms of service and operation and, amazingly enough, friendliness. Most of my current insecurities about travel have been directed at a newly perceived level of incompetence. Not sure why. Traveling last fall was fine; I didn’t babble, drool, get lost, wet my pants, or forget my name—not that those are bad things in one’s 80s exactly, nevertheless I did not wish to experience them. Somehow, between then and now, great insecurities and a narrowing comfort zone have developed; perhaps I just needed to get out more! And there I was. So, because it all was going so splendidly, my confidence had returned by the time I reached Minneapolis to the point where I had a beer (and excellent deep-fried green bean snack!) at the airport and almost dreamed of further travel. Not Mongolia…but at least New York.
Up North
But so far there is little lore-of-the-north to report. It’s warm and mostly sunny, if nowhere near the intensity of either heat or light in New Mexico. There was a rainstorm yesterday of better than average wild wetness, even some trees on the ground this morning.
I open my bedroom window wide at night to summer cool and damp but, and this is big but, with no mosquitos buzzing the screen. Northern Minnesota. NO Mosquitos. If anything could convince me the planet is screwed, irrevocably damaged, dying even, it is No Mosquitos in Minnesota.
Moving right along. Tomorrow the 4th of July, year 250 of the United States of America story. And our president is a greedy pig. Who’s rapidly destroying the evidence that we were growing into a mature, frequently honest, often well-intentioned, country. Not there yet, but trying our damnedest some days.
Oh well, it will be great fun in the morning trying to piece together the gossip surrounding Taylor’s wedding. Yes, that wedding. The only cheery celebration in town.
Marsha and Robert had lots of company today. Good friends, dropping by to wish Robert well on his 83rd birthday. Baby brother with an 83rd birthday! Marsha puts out nice silverware and pretty dishes and three kinds of cake and ice cream and several choices of tea. It’s hard work being a nice person in a small town in Minnesota-Nice country. Makes me proud of family and place…and a little glad I don’t live here.
We walked on a nearby path along the Mississippi the morning after I arrived. There’s still water here not so very far from the headwaters of the great river. And even though another dry year is underway, it looks so lushly green. Leaf green. Summer tree green. Minnesota green. It makes me happy to be here. Happy 250th to one and to all … and to all … a new president.
Oh yeah…happy birthday bro!