Kudos to City Folks

     I don’t know how you do it.  Living in a city with traffic, highways and people on the move every which way is not something I could live with.  Lights shining so brightly you can’t see the stars or get the room remotely dark for bedtime;  just sucking up the electricity to light a vacant parking lot.  Then there’s the noise, always something buzzing or sirens singing and it drowns out the sound of the birds.  Tall buildings block the sunlight from reaching your face and it’s difficult to tell which way is North.

     My kids can’t grasp the city life.  There was garbage on the streets and they couldn’t believe it would still be there after Earth Day.  We went for a bike ride around a lake and Josh dipped his hands into the water to pour some over his head to cool off.  A man nearby said, "I wouldn’t do that if I were you."  We all looked at the man in surprise as he explained there was a power plant nearby, lots of goose poop in the water and who knows what else.  I asked if Josh would start to glow from touching the water and the man didn’t think so.  Josh wanted to know if there were fish in the lake. "There sure are, lots of big northern pike, bullheads, sunfish and more, but you can’t eat ’em, just catch and release because of the pollutants."  Abby chimed in, "Then people don’t even swim in this lake?" "Nope, you definitely wouldn’t want to do that."

     Wow.  I think my kids need to get out more but I don’t want to be the one to take them.  When I get to a city the first thing I look for are nature trails, ones that don’t follow the highway.  Little green patches exist in most cities but it’s difficult to find one where you can’t hear vehicles driving or planes overhead.  Then when you do find them there always seems to be so much trash & garbage I spend more time picking stuff up then I do walking.

     I know there are beautiful places out there, I’ve seen many of them.  The problem is I saw them before I lived on the Gunflint Trail.  After living here for 17 years I have a difficult time not comparing everything to here and I haven’t found anything that beats it since. I’m grateful for the city folks who make the world go around because without them I couldn’t live here at the end of the Gunflint Trail.