Part 1 - 2 Days At The Gunflint Buffet

Many of my formative

younger moments came to pass while visiting my grandparents along the St. Croix River in Solon Springs, WI – a tiny and emblematic North Midwestern river and lake town if ever there was one. The smell of the arborvitae, hemlock, and Norway pine trees, the micro-fine sandy red dirt, dark-pink rocks of granite and ore, and the clarity of the waters up there, took possession of a huge chunk of my senses at an early age. It still pulls at me and fuels my imagination like few places.

Funny to me that a vast majority of people in the States call this “Fly-Over Country”. I’ve traveled quite a bit, and see the people of the Upper Midwest and stereotypical “mountain town people” as one in the same. The heartiness of the terrain, the devotion to it, and the demands of the land are no different. No snowy peaks maybe, but it’s the same reliance and respect, the same lifetime of dirt under the fingernails, and the same magnetism, that makes them get outside regardless of the weather’s temperament. But the lighter population and lack of fanfare very well might be what makes the Upper Midwest feel so vast and uncharted, and just evoke its own definition of “alone”.