Samain                                                                      Moving Moon

Just read an article by the Trib’s Lee Schafer on the difficulty of recruiting millennials to the Twin Cities. Awareness, he said, was the number one problem. I’m sure he’s right.

Before I came to the Twin Cities, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, even Wisconsin were place fillers on a map, spots with no distinguishing characteristics. That seems improbable to me now, after 40 + years here, but it was true. I suppose I must have read something about cold weather, but other than that, they were a mystery.

So much that when Judy and I grew tired of Connersville, Indiana (didn’t take long), I was eager to move to her Wisconsin home of Shiocton, Wisconsin. Why? I was under the adolescent spell of Jack London, especially The Call of the Wild and White Fang. Living where there were lakes and pine forests and cold winters appealed to me. It wasn’t exactly like that, not in Wisconsin at least, though you can approach Jack London territory in the Arrowhead, but it was close enough.

The Twin Cities were a different kind of revelation altogether, nothing in Jack London about them. Here there were progressive politics, lakes inside the city limits!, great parks, lots of libraries, a vibrant arts scene, affordable places to live. The seasons were distinct, too, which I had wanted in my move, not the miserable warm Indiana Januaries with frozen slush and ice storms.

Over time the Twin Cities became home, a place I considered leaving a few times, but when placed in the calculus of benefits and deficits against other cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul always came out in the plus column. Still do, for that matter. With two marked exceptions. They have no grandchildren and Minnesota has no mountains. I know, the Sawtooths, right? Really old volcanoes. The Rockies are young, still jagged and vast.

I am now, and have been for many years, a Minnesotan. Will always be one in my heart, I imagine, though I want to open space for Colorado, too. There’s something about this place, a modesty and a thoughtfulness and a beauty and a sense of communal compassion that will stick with me as a yardstick against which to measure other cities and other states. Those millennials will like it here, if they ever come.