ANOTHER MINNESOTA MORNING

                                

I awoke early this morning to a summer thunderstorm and another amazing Minnesota morning. My nineteen-year-old granddaughter from Phoenix, who is visiting and usually sleeps to noon, was sitting by the patio doors watching the rain come down and she said “Grandpa you don’t know how much I miss this.” she moved to Arizona over a year ago, after being born and raised here.

I have a disk of the song ‘Minnesota Morning’ that’s always lying on top of the player and I went over and slipped it in and pushed play. “I open up my sleepy eyes and see. The morning just the way it should be. By the setting of the midnight moon and the rising of the sun and the feeling like I’ve only just begun. The morning mist still lies, upon the ground and it comes and goes but doesn’t make a sound. And the heavy of the midnight air lightens with the day. There’s a Minnesota morning on the way.”

I guess for me, I take for granted all of the intricacies of this beautiful state and I have never been gone long enough to miss all that is going on the way she had. But as a sat drinking my coffee and listening to the song and the soft rain, I thought about all of the things that were going on right now that I had witnessed in just the last twelve hours. Last night we had gone for a boat ride just as the sun was setting on another perfect day. We slowed to watch the loons showing off their new little one, perched on it’s mothers back. I knew when its was born the other day because I heard them celebrating that morning, somewhere out on the lake. We watched a nervous doe down by the river drinking from the lake, her eyes watching us intently and her bushy white tail flicking in the shadows, her spotted fawn hiding behind her, peeking between her legs. Back home, over my back door, tucked back in some old antlers, is a swallow’s nest. I saw all of the little beaks pointing skyward the other morning and I have watched the mother coming and going on her food runs. The humming birds put on their little air show everyday, darting in and out of the feeders as they drink. Yes there is something going on everywhere you look.

But its not just about the animals and birds, its about the vibrant green world summer brings us with grass and trees and flowers blooming everywhere. It’s about the lakes with their clean clear waters, and bass surfacing down by the dock to take a water bug and leaving a ring of ripples to show us where they surfaced. It’s having to drive carefully, while watching for the turtles laying eggs in the driveway. Sitting on the deck in the evening and watching spectacular sunsets across the lake and the mirrored image of the opposite shoreline, in the still waters of our little golden pond. Sometimes at night you need to just close your eyes and listen to the frogs croaking in the swamp and the waves lapping softly on the shoreline. The birds are singing another Minnesota day away and then you know your living in one of nature’s showplaces and you feel like the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. “And I haven’t seen a day like this, since I went away. Minnesota I am here and I’m going to stay.”