HOME IS WHERE YOUR HEART IS.

We, as native Minnesotans, know just what to expect as we approach another Minnesota winter—that snow will fall and cold temperatures will come—that heating bills will rise and driving can get treacherous. But we also know that there will be days when the sun will shine, icicles will form, and those snow banks will be a place where children, with rosy red cheeks and snotty noses, will play. It will be a chance to dust off the snowmobiles, and ride through God’s country to places otherwise inaccessible to us; a chance to wax up the ski’s, or dust off the snowshoes and hike across this winter wonderland. The air can be cold and crisp—but it’s clean, pure and invigorating. Tiny villages of fish houses will dot the lakes, and to those who have tried it, we know the solitude that comes your way in those cozy shelters. It’s a chance to have the Christmas season the way it’s almost always pictured in our minds and hearts.

We have here in Minnesota, the optimum in the theater of seasons. We start with spring when the outside world renews itself with flowers and plants that have lain hidden for months, waiting for our stars warm rays to wake them up. Streams run cold and clear with the freshest abundant water on earth. Babies of every species are born, and the birds of the air return home to nest because they know this is the place they want to be and to raise their young.  Summer is the time when the whole world comes to visit us because, well, there is nothing like a Minnesota summer. It’s the world’s playground personified. Then, as the world tilts towards winter again, the trees give us a kaleidoscope of color and warm Indian summer days linger until, at last, the whole country goes to sleep and winter settles softly over us once more.

There is a reason people settled here, and it’s not just because it was where the wagon broke down. It was fertile ground for planting crops in, and an abundance of fresh water to nurture those crops. Timber that shades us, warms us when it’s burned, and shelters us with its lumber. The world outside is a virtual zoo of birds and animals, some of them providing us with food. Yes, a lot of them do rest or migrate in the winter, but you know what? They always come back. I have traveled from the desert southwest to the swamps of Florida and the warmth of the gulf.  I have gone from the Cascades of Washington to the seashores of Southern California. But always, the places that seemed to be closest to my heart, have been the places that most resembled home.

I fully realize that people all over this great country have places that they call home, and they have many reasons for putting down roots where they did. Many people from here have gone elsewhere, looking for something better—and that’s just human nature—but I have seen so many of them come right back here where they started. There is a saying, “Minnesota nice,” and I believe there is a lot of merit to that saying. I think our dispositions are shaped and influenced so much by the world around us; the people we associate with and slowly, but surely, we become a product of our environment. As I look out the window today, I see my world in this slow but sure transformation to winter, but I don’t dread it—I embrace it.