City Folk

It took a pandemic for a Texas transplant to discover his True North.

by

Two weeks. We’ll just head out of town for two weeks. It was mid-March, and the governor’s shelter-in-place order was imminent. Distance learning for our 7-year-old would start after spring break. With COVID-19 upon us, we thought we’d ride it out for a bit up north before returning to the city and our old life.

The over/under on this thing was anybody’s guess. In Hennepin County, where we lived, cases were growing by the day—and that was with barely any testing. Experts were saying it was 10 times the reported numbers. Ellie, my better half, runs an advertising agency in the North Loop. Like nearly every other business owner, she had no choice but to close the office. I’m a writer and director. Every production I had scheduled for the spring vanished with the lockdown. At least I could still write. It was clear nothing was keeping us in the city—not work, school, day care, restaurants, museums, or theaters. As many of us quickly discovered, “home” was anywhere with internet.

My in-laws have a place on the North Shore of Lake Superior. They had been going there since the early ’70s and had just finished building a new, bigger cabin—their retirement home. So we decided to hunker down in the North.

Cook County, the northeasternmost county in Minnesota, seemed like a good place to lay low. At the time, COVID was nonexistent there. Not one case. The local guidelines suggested people social distance “one moose apart.” Our kids were 7 and 1 at the time. Out the back door, we could explore the shoreline of Lake Superior. Out the front, we would roam the trails along the Caribou River. If we stayed in the city, would we even be able to go to a park? 

I should point out, I’m not originally from here and honestly didn’t fully get the North Shore. I mean, the view is nice and everything, but how long can one drink that in? The little ones loved hunting for agates. I was less impressed by this vaguely translucent brown rock. The bugs—mosquitoes, flies, and moths—were constantly aflutter and occasionally the size of a breadbasket. And frankly, I was confused by “hiking.” I’d always thought a hike was about the destination. At the end of your journey, there would be some kind of waterfall or vista or something, anything, as a reward for the effort. But most hikes up here didn’t have a finale, grand or otherwise. Sometimes we just walked until we turned around. What was the point? It wasn’t my version of exercise. It was a walk, for crying out loud. Up until now, the North Shore had been OK for a long weekend, but I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of spending two weeks (or, god forbid, more) here.

Our first days at the beginning of the pandemic, like those of many others, were about survival: financial, domestic, and academic. Ellie fought to keep her company afloat. The grandparents watched our littlest one. Cooking and cleaning for six people was nonstop. I was in charge of distance learning: a full-time position, as many parents with young children soon discovered. There was no bandwidth for anything else. Everything was hard: the curriculum, the technology, the attention span of a 7-year-old. I never wanted this job, but everyone on our team had a part to play. We stepped up.

Of course, we were incredibly fortunate to have an alternate path to choose from, and more than a few stars had to align for that to be possible. It was the perfect storm of work from home, distance learning, and having access to a house that could take us all in.

Every day I forced myself to get out for a short run. It was still winter on the North Shore, and the Superior Hiking Trail was covered with snow. But each day the snow melted a little more and I went a bit farther. When I run in the city, I put my headphones on and just go. But none of my playlists worked with the terrain. When I couldn’t find my headphones one day, I went without music. Turns out, the soundtrack I was looking for was already there. In the city, I run and tune things out. But here, I discovered the art (and joy) of tuning in. One day, one mile, one trail at a time, I started to listen to the woods. And, I think, for the first time in my life, I actually noticed nature.

Admittedly, it was kind of bleak. No leaves on the trees. No grass on the ground. Just shades of brown and gray. But it was easy to see deer. Of course, I had seen deer before, but the sightings were usually a surprise, fleeting, and a bit of a blur. But here in the early spring, I realized it was unusual if I didn’t see a doe or buck. Often, I’d come upon families. And while they were certainly skittish, there was something about being among them that made life a little richer.

Once deer were on the radar, a funny thing happened: I started noticing more things. Every day the trail changed, subtly. The snow melted. The river raged. Small green patches of land appeared, as did knobs on the trees. Watching seasons turn in the city is somehow more abrupt. One day it’s 40 degrees and slushy, the next it’s 70 and the streets are filled with sundresses. 

Days turned into months, and our two-week triage evolved into routine. Most mornings began before sunrise (I saw more sunrises in 2020 than I had during the rest of my life combined) as we read the news—local, national, and global—over a cup of coffee. After breakfast, we withdrew to our respective “offices” for Zoom classrooms and meetings. After lunch, more meetings, a long nap for the littlest one, and a short run for Dad. Dinner preparations usually began in the late afternoon and often bled into happy hour. The bedtime routine ended with a book in bed. Kiddos were down by 8:30, and adults weren’t far behind.

Not surprisingly, our routine was filled with less of everything. Fewer meetings. Fewer playdates. We didn’t eat out or hit the bar. There was certainly less variety, but we didn’t want for spontaneity. We had fewer friends and neighbors, but there was an old-world, Norman Rockwell–esque thing happening. Folks would drop by with homemade honey (yes, we have friends who keep bees), fresh-baked bread, pies, a bushel of apples, and jam. They often stayed for a distanced happy hour on the porch. I think we all just craved human connection. 

On the weekends, we found longer hikes. I got a backpack that let me carry our toddler. I had always thought hikes weren’t challenging, but if you add distance, 40 pounds, and a bit of elevation…voilà: One man’s hike is another man’s boot camp. Dinners were more extravagant. Sometimes we’d fire up the outdoor pizza oven and make dough from scratch, and the whole street would wander down. After dinner we enjoyed popcorn and a movie. We stayed up pretty late—sometimes till 10.

Though our days were filled with less of everything, with the exception of maybe food and wine, somehow our lives weren’t wanting for anything. Every day was filled with laughter and learning. We were outside on the shore and trails. We stayed connected with far-flung friends and family over the internet. Even though the postal service didn’t deliver, Amazon and UPS did, and everything we desired was dropped at our door. We found that not only could we live with less, we could live better with less. We realized we were fine with the two weeks’ worth of stuff we had brought along and didn’t miss one thing. If we could do without all those things for weeks on end, maybe we could do away with them—gulp—for good?

Speaking of discovery…I never dreamed I’d be living with the in-laws, yet here we were under one roof. Yes, there was a learning curve. That amount of time reveals what even a family vacation cannot: the whole person—like how someone spends their day, how they manage stress and solve problems, what they need to keep going. I think we acquired a new respect and, dare I say, even added love and appreciation for each other. Yes, there was more Kris Kristofferson music than I like at our happy hour, and there was also more chaos, disorder, and Elmo than the in-laws like in their twilight years. But these are quibbles. This is a pandemic. You don’t get to complain there’s a fly in your soup if you have soup! Being together was not a penance; it was a perk.

Spring eased into summer. We were going to be here for a while, and the North Shore was changing us. In June, after the Strawberry Moon but before July’s Buck Moon, I noticed I was observing time in a markedly different way. We sent our 7-year-old to camp at a nearby elementary school. He came home filled with knowledge about rocks and trees and wildlife. Nature was everywhere. He was dirty and exhausted. He basked in the glow that comes from playing with other kids. We befriended another transplant family from Boston with kids the same age. They arrived on the North Shore around the same time we did. They were city folk navigating distance learning, working remotely—no longer tourists but not yet locals. They were like us, but taller.

As we looked ahead, the fall seemed like it would be filled with more precautions but no guarantees. It didn’t take much imagination to envision a return to some form of distance learning in the city. Rather than heading home and repeating the past, we discovered the answer was literally right in front of us: Birch Grove Community School in Tofte, a preschool-through-fifth-grade school with around 40 students in all of K–5. As you might imagine, it is very focused on the outdoors. Every kid gets a pair of cross-country skis and snowshoes. There’s an alpine ski team and outdoor skating rink. But what finally sold us on Birch Grove was that it was recommended by the Minnesota Department of Health to have full-time, in-person learning at the time, while schools in the Cities were recommended for hybrid learning.

Cook County has approximately 5,300 residents on 1,400 square miles of land—pretty much the opposite of urban density. Sure, an abundance of tourists blow through all year, but there’s plenty of space to be safe. Of course, no one could predict the future, but COVID in Cook County seemed manageable. Five total cases in five months. And every time there was a new positive case, even if we didn’t know the person’s name, we knew what they did, where they worked, and generally where they lived. In the city, positive cases were statistics—in Cook County, they were people.

Up until this point, being up north was mostly a reactive decision on our part. Enrolling our son in school would be a deliberate commitment to stay here for the academic year. But we were city folk, weren’t we?! We thrived on the hustle and bustle—happy hours, concerts, catching a game, attending swanky events. Except none of that was happening. The city was different. Then again, so were we. I had started chopping and chucking wood. I baked bread. We hit the bike paths. We had cookouts on the beach. We went on hikes in the woods all the time. Our little one turned 2 and was learning new words every day: waterfall, rainbow, pine cone, butterfly, eagle, bear. These weren’t pictures in a book. This was her life. 

What we missed most about the city was our friends and family. But a funny thing happened. Loved ones found their way up for long weekends in the bunkhouse, the original structure that’s now a guest house, and we spent socially distanced time together at the picnic table and outdoor pizza oven. We weren’t as isolated as we had feared. In a way, the city was coming to us. 

So much of my life before is a blur, but I expect 2020 will stand out as something different, unique, indelible. One year later, I’m writing again and Ellie is busier than ever. We have a second grader going to school daily—in person. Our littlest one is starting to speak in full sentences. (“Dada went skiing.”) We were wary as we entered winter, but a local confided in us: Don’t tell anyone, but winter is the best part. So true. Our days are filled with hikes and short runs (hooray for traction cleats), “wild ice” skating, and sleds, and our season passes to Lutsen put us on the mountain three times a week. This weekend we’re going dogsledding. Not only did we survive, but in one aspect, we thrived, connecting with nature in a way that was as surprising as it was profound. 

A year ago, we packed for two weeks. Somewhere along the way, we bet on an academic year of our life on the North Shore. So far it seems like a good bet.