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Bob Collins

A cure for politics? Minnesota’s Boundary Waters

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No pressure, Boundary Waters, but the New York Times this afternoon is telling the nation you're the cure for the political cesspool gripping the nation right now.

There you are, right at the top of the page of the Gray Lady's website:

bwca_nyt

The extensive story, from travel writer Peter Fox, doesn't really tell us anything people in this area don't already know, but the article isn't really intended for us.

We listened to nature for an hour at Rebecca Falls as Paul napped and we ate lunch. It didn't sound like anything I’d heard before. Chickadees, white-throated sparrows, finches, grosbeaks and loons called out. A bald eagle glided overhead and an osprey crashed into the water a hundred yards away.

The lake was layered with sweet flag, sedge, lilies, horehound, bulrush and buckbean. The air smelled like stagnant water, rotting wood, pine and sweet columbine.

Wild licorice, fireweed, hawkweed, bastard toadflax and littleleaf pussytoes created a carpet underfoot. Thin, green marsh fern circled lakes alongside moonwort, rattlesnake fern and horsetail.

The accurately idyllic prose, punctuated with criticism of the proposed copper-nickel mine near where the South Kawishiwi River flows into the BWCA, should soon lead to us meeting lots of people in the woods who don't sound Minnesotan, but who are trying to get away from the ugliness of the real world. Who can blame them?

It was a comment to Fox's story, which is part of a forthcoming book, that adequately captured the challenge of solitude.

"There are no easy ways to be in it, thus the attraction."

Dear reader,

Political debates with family or friends can get heated. But what if there was a way to handle them better?

You can learn how to have civil political conversations with our new e-book!

Download our free e-book, Talking Sense: Have Hard Political Conversations, Better, and learn how to talk without the tension.

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