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“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” —Charles Dickens

Part four in the series takes us on a late-winter hike through Lake Maria State Park, a meditation on seasonal transition and the quiet resilience of a landscape poised between winter’s hold and spring’s emergence.

1. Late February in Minnesota is often a slippery in-between.

2. Sun, sleet, and shadow trade places on glacial hills shaped by retreating ice.

3. Hawks scold, woodpeckers shriek, and winter quietly gives ground to mud, streams, and the smell of thawing earth.

4. At dusk, the sky burns purple and red at a log camper cabin where a fire catches in the stove, feeling especially good on a winter night in Minnesota.

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Alison Young is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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"Fall is audacious, even if it marks an ending, a last celebration as everything prepares for the long winter, and the Sioux quartzite escarpment that makes up Blue Mounds, bear witness."

Part three in the series brings us to far, Southwestern Minnesota for a day of rock climbing at Blue Mounds State Park. The day unfolds as a contemplative journey through ancient rock, shifting seasons, and the resilient rhythms of prairie life.

1. A mile-long wall of Sioux quartzite rises nearly 100-feet above the prairie, a sentinel watching over the seasons passing over millions of years.

2. The rock appeared blue from a distance but it's really pink and very climbable.

3. An indigo bunting, roaming buffalo, howling coyotes and the fading prairie grasses and bright yellow flowers surround us as we enjoy the last warm days before winter settles in.

4. The day ends with the sweet burbling song of a rare, but regular visitor to this park, a blue grosbeak singing a final farewell before flying south.

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Alison Young is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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“Portage” means carrying a boat and its cargo between navigable waters. Thick forests once made overland travel in Minnesota and lands north slow and punishing, so lakes and rivers served as superhighways of the north. But moving from one lake to the next required hauling everything, canoes included...

Part two in the series takes us on a short hike in Grand Portage State Park revealing the forces that shaped the land as well as the enduring human respect for that land which has long dictated travel, history, and preservation along Minnesota’s North Shore.

1. Gichi-Onigaming is the "Great Carrying Place," a nearly nine-mile portage around Minnesota's highest waterfall, the High Falls, where the Pigeon River plunges 120 feet over over billion-year-old basalt cliffs on a mad rush to Lake Superior.

2. The mist-filled viewing platform under a permanent rainbow is easily accessed by a paved trail and boardwalk, crowded on this hot summer's day with tourists.

3. A more rugged five-mile trail heads deep into forest to Middle Falls, another obstacle on the river which separates the United States from Canada.

4. Grand Portage State Park was established in 1989 and is the only state park not owned by the state. Rather it's a cooperative effort with the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, shared stewardship, shared history, and shared reverence for the land.

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Alison Young is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Support the show