I had forgotten how much I love Minnesota.  Rob and I spent more than three years here when we were first married.  That year, the first snows fell on September 21^st.  Two months later, on Thanksgiving morning, we opened our door to 22 inches of snow, fallen overnight.  I remember our neighbor at the time describing the weather changes in Minnesota as, “Wagnerian.”  (That’s a highfalutin way of saying, “epic.”)

The weather has indeed been epic over these past eleven days.  Last night there was yet another severe thunderstorm that put us all on tornado watch — the thunder, the lightning, the wind, the hail, the rain so dense you could no longer see the lake even through the flashes of light.  This morning, the skies were clear, the water a gorgeous shade of blue, soft breezes rustled the trees and the loons called from the lake.  It makes me remember one of the better chamber-of-commerce-type sayings about the state:

Minnesota
Where the lakes meet the trees
and the trees meet the sky
and the sky meets the sun
and the sun shines down on Minnesota.

It was great to be back in the Twin Cities again – to remember how infinitely livable and civilized they are – so many lakes, so many paths, so many bikes traveling safely along roadsides, so many old hippies.  It felt like home.