Minne-so-tan

Part II

Being There

I'm always intrigued at this country of ours - one nation, made up of individual states, each having their own unique funny little ways.* I am a New Yorker by birth and upbringing, a begrudging Illinoian for over 30 years, and now a Minnesotan. As I'm writing this, we have now lived in Minnesota for almost six months. 

It has not been a "normal" relocation. While house-hunting in Minnesota, I noticed an increasingly troublesome pain in my left leg. Though I jumped through the usual medical hoops to diagnose and fix what was becoming a serious walking problem, I was in pain through most of the packing and unpacking portions of our move. By the time we were settled in to our new place, I was pretty much unable to walk. Eventually, what had been initially misdiagnosed as a lower back problem, turned out to be an "easily" fixable hip issue. I just needed a hip replacement. The pandemic had made such surgeries "elective", meaning long wait times in scheduling. I must have been able to project a sufficient amount of pain and desperation as well as flexibility to the surgeon's schedulers, and I was slipped into a last minute cancellation.

Recovery from hip surgery takes time, and though it was great to now be painless, I still wasn't fully able to do all the things I would have normally done to make myself at home in my new state. Having always been an avid walker and explorer of new places, I found it difficult to not be out in our new community, to not be able to explore the whole new series of trails and parks and rivers and lakes that Minnesota is famous for, and, of course, to not be able to fish. My husband was now out and about and doing those things on his own (not the fishing, though). Still, I've discovered some things about living in Minnesota from traveling around in the car and reading and watching local news and just sitting at home. Here are some of them:

We moved to be closer to family - and it's great fun! Visits from our oldest daughter and our two granddaughters weekly, coffee and some sweet treat every Saturday morning with our youngest daughter and the occassional weekend visit with our son. We've celebrated two birthdays the past two weekends, with all of us gathering together for dinner and cake. After years of living almost 400 miles apart, it's a nice change.

Big birds are still here -

When we moved we sadly left our old house with the pond in the backyard with its egrets and great blue herons and never ending array of wildlife. We now live in a townhouse community with only more townhomes in our backyard with neighbors' birdfeeders attracting juncos and chickadees and other winter birds. It was, then, with delighted surprise we found that spilled bird seed from said feeders also attract turkeys – yes, large, thanksgiving-sized birds that stroll through our backyards on a daily basis. We've also seen pheasants. Our biggest ornithological surprise, however, has been the presence of bald eagles. We live near a bend in the Mississippi river so we have the river both to the north and east of us. Bald eagles nest along this stretch of the Mississippi and we have only to look up to see bald eagles. Bigger than hawks, the eagles are easy to spot with their distinctive white head and tails, though I will admit that my first eagle sighting was of a juvenile that had its white tail and but had yet to develop its white head. Still majestic.

Winter is winter - 

The weather pundits here say that this winter is a colder than average winter for the Minneapolis area. Most of last week we awakened to sub zero temperatures. The wind chills on those days were in the double digits. This could explain why every townhome we looked at had a gas fireplace, which is a nice feature when the temperatures start to drop every evening in preparation for the next subzero night. The Minneapolis area has a yearly snowfall average of 52 inches compared to the Chicago area average of 27 inches, but we former New Yorkers still remember our nine years in Rochester, New York, with its yearly snow average of 99 inches. This is probably why, though we have had snow on the ground here continuously for weeks on end, it doesn't seem overwhelming. We've seen worse.

Weather is a state-wide obsession -

Local weather forecasts in Minneapolis are a wonderous display of Minnesota stateness. Seriously. Illinois and Minnesota are roughly the same length top to bottom, about 378 miles. Chicago weather reporting is only interested in Chicago area weather. Living 50 miles away in a far north suburb of Chicago, our village was sometimes not even on the Chicago stations' weather maps, and it would take a devastating tornado in downstate Illinois for the local Chicago weather to report it. Here, the local TV weather people report the state's weather, in every local news forecast. It took some getting used to to hear high snow totals being predicted for areas of Minnesota 200 miles away with the same seriousness as a snow that would be predicted for the Minneapolis area. I've yet to find a solid reason for this phenomenon. Are those living in the far North dependent on Twin Cities television for their weather? Does everyone living in the Twin Cities own a cabin in the north
woods and need to keep an eye on the weather up there? Is there always someone in the Minneapolis area planning a hunting or fishing trip and therefore need to know what weather to expect in other parts of the state? Or is it just another aspect of "Minnesota Nice", care and concern for our Minnesotan neighbors up north?

Minnesota Nice – Everyone we've met here is nice. Store clerks, medical personnel, neighbors – they all seem nice. Minnesota Nice is a real thing, a way of describing the pleasant ways of the people here, though some say it is a superficial nice at times, a desire to avoid confrontation. Still, twice in the past three weeks, I was asked if I needed help getting to my car. Both times I was waiting at the entrance to a store while my husband went to get the car to pick me up. Both times the offer was made by a customer, not an employee, one even offering me a ride home if I lived nearby. This offer was made by a woman my own age who thought I was calling for an Uber. Maybe the offers were inspired by my gray hair, maybe by my cane, but I like to think it was just some Minnesota Nice.

Wait, wait! There's more...winter -

Minnesotans embrace winter. For the most part, they don't complain about it but find ways to enjoy it. Last week, the 32nd annual Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza attracted 10,000 people to a large lake in northern Minnesota. Most forest preserves are open for cross country skiing, many lighted at night. There is a myriad of winter festivals, snow sculpting contests, frozen ice displays of various kinds and loppets, which are cross country ski events, often lighted by luminaries when they occur at night. I know about these events not from actually attending them, but from learning about them watching the local news, sitting next to our gas fireplace in the comfort of our warm living room. The local news also highlights the best backyard skating rinks and pond hockey tournaments, visiting families and kids aspiring toward a professional hockey future. Sometimes the cold weather events challenge one's sanity, like this year's NHL Winter Classic held at Target Field in Minneapolis. It was -6 degrees at game start, dropping to -10 with wind chills in the -20s, officially making it the coldest outdoor game in league history. And then there was the World Cup qualifier soccer game played outdoors in St. Paul between the U.S. and Honduras. The temperature was 3 degrees at game time. It did not end well for the Honduran team which came ill-prepared, losing 3-0 and having some of their players treated for hypothermia by the end of the game.

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It's still early days in our Minne-so-tan adventure, and more than half of those days have been cold, snowy wintery ones. I've not fully embraced the winter aspects this year. Maybe I'll try snowshoeing next year. As for my husband, he has already ventured out on his cross country skis, blazing a trail in the swale between the townhomes in our neighborhood. He's well on his way to being Minne-so-tan.

Winter: It's not just a season, it's who we are – Garrison Keillor

*I've written about some of these state differences here: https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2013/11/statesroad-rites-rite-rit-noun-social.html