Northern Star

Like the stream that bends to sea,
Like the pine that seeks the blue;
Minnesota, still for thee
Thy sons are strong and true.

— Minnesota State Song

Call me biased (went to college here, have many Minnesotan friends) but I love this state.  It is quite possibly the most humanly friendly and guileless place on earth, and once you get a bit south of its somewhat harsh most northern reaches, it blooms and opens to embrace you — at least in summer.  Such anyway was my experience today.  I covered something around 90 miles in easy riding, and ended up in the town of Brainerd, which was a bit farther than I’d planned to make it.  The coming day will be an easy ride to Little Falls, MN to hang out with dear friends Bob and Linda … which is good, since the last day of this mini-tour is going to be a doozy.

What a difference the weather can make.  It was fine and sunny all day, but even more importantly there was a very subtle tailwind of about 5mph which made everything instantly easier.  This part of Minnesota is also rich in bike trails, and for a good part of the day I followed the MRT (Mississippi River Trail) … This particular route is off-road for only sections, unlike the nearby Paul Bunyan State Trail which runs for some 110 miles completely off-street.  Impressively, these are not urban trails, but connectors between the state’s small towns, which makes it plausible to bike much of the entire state on a separated trail.  Washington State has a whole bunch to learn from this … due to lack of investment and political will, we have no real state trail system, and very poor state-level support for cycling (this is our version of a statewide bike map, for comparison purposes.)

For whatever reason, this was one of those days on the bike that just flew by.  I passed lake after lake after lake.  Some were wild and somewhat forbidding, way out in the middle of nowhere.  Others were remnants of the Cuyuna Iron Range, their shores dotted with abandoned concrete works (this was especially the case around the town of Crosby.)  Most, however, were surrounded by resorts — a word that in the upper midwest has a very different connotation than  perhaps it does elsewhere.  Resorts are neither tropical nor particular fancy — they’re often centered around fishing, pontooning and accommodations are almost always cabins (though sometimes lodges) of a modest nature.  They are, in short, of the people, in a way that is hard to capture.  Many of the beautiful lakes I passed today were ringed by such resorts.  I imagined the families that inhabited the cabins I saw flash by:  suburban parents, excited children, sullen teenagers.  I stopped at a roadhouse called “Just Up North” and sat in the shade for a while on a wooden bench that had been damaged by over-use and watched the vacationers stroll by.

Cycling in the evening is particularly calming … the temperatures subside, the winds generally die down and a calm descends.  In this calm I pedaled down the streets of Brainerd, MN — so cruelly portrayed in film and TV’s Fargo.  Residents waived from their front lawns.  There was a bed waiting for me.  90 miles felt like 20.

From the woods and waters fair;
From the prairies waving far,
At thy call they throng with their shout and song;
Hailing thee their Northern Star.

— Minnesota State Song