As a kid, I had the distinct impression that living in Minnesota was not cool. I remember looking at the popular kids in my class and thinking, “They can’t be that cool. They live in Minnesota, they’re 10 and they go to Emmet Williams Elementary.” My standards were higher than that.
I felt like, when rating the directions, north was by far the least desirable. It took me a long time to realize that my house actually faced north, because I figured my dad would have built it facing a cooler, more optimistic direction, like South.
Needless to say, I’ve never had much Minnesota pride. I always assumed that after slaving away trying to … write or something … for a few years, I would hightail it out of here, heading to New York or New Orleans or Nanjing.
A lot of my friends don’t feel this way.
“Here, we get a beautiful change of seasons.”
“I love it here, it’s peaceful and F. Scott Fitzgerald and stuff.”
I felt these arguments were false. The midwest actually sucks for many reasons:
-Cold
-Culturally less significant
-Not close to oceans
-Few mountains
But Minneapolis also features insanely cold, blizzardy winters that make it physically hurt to go outside for a full 6 months, along with a fairly small population full of gossip and people famous for white rap.
Despite all this hating, for the first time in my life I’ve actually started to feel a connection with Minnesota. It might just be resigning myself to the fact that I don’t want to move away from my family, friends and job, or it might just be that I’ve been growing into the cold in some cool, mystical, Eskimo-like way.
This weekend, my fellow bloggers and I used a Groupon to stay at a campy cabin hotel in Brainerd, where we had full access to something called Paul Bunyan Waterpark. As I sat in the outdoor hot tub and, just past a huge dumpster, saw a bunch of orange, dying trees, I thought, I actually like this place. It is a part of me.
You just have to come to terms with things in your own ways.
Photo by Jay Gabler
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