A Love Letter to Grand Marais

I found Grand Marais, MN on accident; it was a stop on a fishing trip to Canada.  On first glance, it was just another small town along highway 61.  But two glances, one out to the lakeshore and another between my father-in-law and me, and I knew I'd be back.



"This place is awesome," he said, sliding back into the truck. "We should come up here with the wives."



Grand Marais has an identity crisis....it doesn't know quite who it is....and that's a good thing.



On first glance, Grand Marais is hard and cold.  Built on a bedrock of iron ore and cargo ship steel, it sits abreast to might Lake Superior, its shores the anvil of her winter fury.  Even today, even in the warm summer months, there is little place for the meek.



And yet this harshness beget a beauty that is uniquely Northern.  Towering evergreens, uniquely suited to America's Northern Frontier, coat the land in emerald, while a tapestry of rivers and streams, themselves the descendants of bygone glaciers, carve and whittle the hard land into gently rolling hills.



What is true of the land can also be said of the people.  The tales of the native Ojibwe and the earliest European settlers are as much a part of Grand Marais as the land itself, and their hardiness still gleams in the eyes of those who call the area home today.  And though it makes them strong, it does not make them hard.  Wool socks and Teva sanders are their uniform, but it is the warmth of hospitality is what truly characterizes the residents of this place.  It seems that here, as much as anywhere in the state, the meaning of "Minnesota Nice" is shown true.



These days, we long for the comfortable and the easy. We want places and people and ideas that we know.  Places like Grand Marais defy this sort of ease and comfort.