Where have you been the last month?
My dear friends--those who may be reading from across the globe.
Well, I thought I deserved a bit of a vacation.
Anyway, let me begin with my trip to the Twin Cities,
MSP, Minnesota for the holidays.
My mother now lives in exurbia, a place called Rosemount.
She had lived in St. Paul my whole 40 years, but she got
married, and well things change. For a few years now my dad's
been living in Mendota Heights, first ring 'burbia
and the advantage of the most beautiful river view
on the drive to downtown St. Paul.
This drive down Lilydale Road made me see the poetry
of the Minnesota landscape with fresh eyes.
I was struck again as I crossed the Minnesota River south
of the cities.
I always considered the landscape of
Minnesota to be boring, especially in comparison
to the drama of mountains and ocean on the West Coast.
But if anything could change my mind about this beauty,
it was a fanstastic exhibit of photographs by Jim Brandenburg at the
Bell Museum, not of the forested landscape bordering
the rivers, but the prairie lands to the south that extend southwest to Oklahoma.
Driving around the cities (as we natives like to call them),
I was also struck by how narrow many of the streets and highways
were. Of course, everyone complains about the traffic, and there
were a few rush hour jams, but I could still get from Rosemount
to downtown Minneapolis in under 45 minutes during rush hour.
What is shocking about Minnexurbia is how beauty and ugliness are
so closely intertwined. One minute you will be driving down a
a road adjacent nothing but forest and grassland, until you
turn into a two year old development of pseudo neo-traditionalism--
front porches and the garage in front? A lame effort at melding
ideas of Duany Plater-Zyberk and satisfying the retiree market.
Even worse, down the road in "the big city"
(what is this Eagan or Apple Valley?) you have
a series of big box stores with chain restaurant islands dabbed here
and there amid the parking lot oceans. The roads here are
8 lanes wide with appropriate left hand turn signals at major
intersections--pedestrian traffic might as well be a crime.
My stepfather ran into a deer with his minivan the other
night. Mom said the animal was able to crawl to the other side
of the road, but the sheriff later had to go back and shoot it.
My dad just purchased some property north of the
cities so he could have some shooting land. He grew up on a farm,
but he hadn't been hunting since his college days in
Iowa City over forty years ago. What's going on here?
My Minnesota has turned upside down.
The snow on the ground was almost completely melted during the
40 degree average temps we had over the course of the week I was
there. Until the day my plane left and the storm came...
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