1. Minnesota Nice. Now I know what ‘Minnesota Nice’ really means. It’s a natural kindness. It’s in the air and it’s in a smile. There’s no feeling of obligation to reciprocate, although you often feel the urge to do so. Some examples of Minnesota Nice: eating venison at a Labor Day gathering, being in an appreciation circle at Circles of Support, going on a motorboat ride at Pokegama Lake, singing “Blowing in the Wind” to live guitar in the MobileBooth, and devouring a complimentary burger basket at a play about an old doo-wop group in The Reif Center.

Here are some photographs that will give you a taste of what Minnesota Nice is – smiles and generosity, lakes and long hikes – hopefully you can bring it into your own life, wherever you are:

To continue…I also brought along…

2. A photograph of Judy Garland’s childhood home. Grand Rapids is the birthplace of Judy Garland. I went to her childhood home and found out – to my dismay – that the ruby slippers have actually been stolen from the Judy Garland Museum! Many theories have been circulating as to who stole them, no one has been found guilty yet.

3. A Zimmy’s Waterbottle and T-Shirt. I will always remember my day trip to Hibbing, Minnesota with Heidi Holtan of KAXE. “Zimmy’s Restaurant” is named after Bob Dylan (Bob Zimmerman when he grew up in Hibbing), but the town is notorious for so much more.

Hibbing is sometimes called “The Town That Moved.” It was built on the iron ore of the Mesabi Iron Range. The largest open-pit mine in the world sits at the edge of town. Many of the civic structures in the town were built with mining company money. One of the architectural trade-offs was a new high school (often called “The Palace in the Wilderness”) worth over $3.9 million in 1920. It was built with the hands of people from over 30 different countries who came to Hibbing in search of fresh opportunity. (Bob Dylan attended this high school and a piano he played once is still sometimes used for performances.)

Greyhound Bus also began in Hibbing and now has a Greyhound Bus Museum to commemorate its beginnings. There are mannequins to guide the visitor through and an outdoor lot with vintage Greyhound Buses.

4. Wild Rice from Leech Lake Reservation. Wild rice is Minnesota’s state grain and is part of a culture of harvest in the Ojibwe tribe, the third largest group of Native Americans-First Nations in the United States. According to Ojibwe stories, people were led out west to Minnesota through a series of prophecies, declaring that there would be food. Wild rice is what they found. I can’t wait to have my wild rice with blueberries and milk.

Needless to say, my bags are very full! There are so many stories in this Northern Minnesota land and certainly enough warmth to go around when it starts to get cold.

Bob Dylan grew up as Robert Zimmerman in Hibbing, Minnesota – 30 minutes away from Grand Rapids. B.J. Rolfzen was his high school English teacher for 2 years. I went on a very special visit to B.J. Rolfzen’s home in Hibbing with Heidi Holtan of KAXE. (I brought the muffins.? Heidi brought the recording equipment). B.J. is well known around town for his long career as an English teacher and his special connection to Bob. He speaks annually at “Dylan Days,” a local event to celebrate the life of the musician.

B.J. remembers one of the rare visits Bob made to Hibbing several years ago. “I remember distinctly. He told me, ëYou’ve taught me everything I know.’ I dispute that. I’ve taught him half of what he knows.”

“When I was young, I was a bum,” he says. “I lived in the Great Depression. I slept in a bed of straw with my three brothers. It smelled like urine. There was no heat,” B.J. says with the same slow rhythm that he uses to read his favorite poems.

“My life changed overnight when I joined the Navy,” he continues. “I found out that I had to know something if I was going to survive in this world. So I started reading and I’ve been reading ever since.” B.J. went to college on the GI Bill and eventually got his Masters in English.

There’s a pamphlet in front of B.J.’s breakfast plate with poems from a symposium he read at in Minneapolis. “Are these your favorite poems?” I ask.

“Not all of them, but you have to cut it off somewhere.” He reads John Donne and then Alfred Lord Tennyson, reciting The Eagle: “And like a thunderbolt he falls,” he finishes with prolonged cadence.

B.J. believes in work. “Don’t be afraid to work. It’s not easy, but you have to work.” He repeats the word “work” several more times. “You work until the job is done,” BJ says, letting the done resonate at the roof of his mouth like a gong.

He met his wife, Leona, on a Greyhound bus going to St. Cloud. He stood next to her seat in the aisle. They have been married for 60 years and have 4 children. Leona has set up a Bob Dylan museum in the basement next to the laundry room. There are Bob Dylan records, a Bob Dylan pillow, and a photograph of Echo Helstrom (Bob’s high school girlfriend). Everything is in a brown plastic frame.

B.J. describes Bob in his class. “Robert was shy. I can see him coming through the door of classroom 204. I remember it distinctly because he was always doing the same thing. He always came in to class alone. He always sat in the same chair, three seats from the door in the first row. Right under my nose for two years.”

B.J.’s basement office is the warmest room in the house. The walls are cinderblock painted in pistachio green. When we first sit down, he plays “With God on Our Side,” closing his eyes, letting his reading glasses slide to the tip of his nose. He taps his socked feet on the carpet.

“Did you have any expectations for what Bob Dylan would do with his life?” I ask.

“I have expectations for all my students, because they all worked hard. It is impossible to predict what will happen to people. Human nature is so unpredictable and that is the pleasure of being human because you never know what is going to happen to you. You might become a Bob Dylan. You might become a Shakespeare. You might become a B.J. Rolfzen.”

John Latimer has his Carhart logger jeans rolled up. He is taking me on a short nature hike up the Mississippi River, which runs in back of the MobileWest booth. John is a rural mail carrier in Grand Rapids, Minnesota who has been hosting The Phenology Show at KAXE for 25 years, collecting data about the natural world from classrooms and fellow observers. He gets people excited about what they see.

Down the path, there is a plant that he doesn’t recognize. Normally, he carries a voice recorder so that he can describe the plant and later determine its name. Today, he borrows a piece of paper. “These seeds are just astounding,” he says, using a mechanical pencil to draw a picture of the plant.

“The more you find out, the more you realize that you don’t know,” he says. “I’ve always had this ëOh my God, look at this’ approach. I look at things around me with the eyes of a 5th grader.”

John regularly swims across lakes. “Look up at the top of those trees,” he says. “Now, imagine that there is a mirror reflecting above them and you can see the entire top of the forest.” John wears prescription goggles, so he can see the bottom of the lake. He puts on ice skates when it gets cold.

John grew up with parents who valued the names of things around him. His father was a forester and his mother was a “farm girl.” “When I was younger, though, the woods were just something I would walk through. Now I see this beak hazel and know it grows in clumps,” he says, pulling pack the red branches in front of him, “so I can find a path.”

As we walk the path towards the shade of a park, John stops to talk about what is around us: Poisonous baneberries, lady fern spores, and flying ants are all miniature worlds exposed to me in these path-side explanations.

When John walks into a classroom, he takes the kids outside to explain what phenology is, teaching them the importance of investigation. “If you see something new, capture its image and talk to your teachers, or get a field guide to see what it is.” John also likes to play with words, “When you give a kid a name for a thing, they like to take possession of it.”

Down by the river, we see a leafhopper. I look away, ready to hike back up the riverbank, but John stays where he is. “I get so excited about this stuff! He really is pretty – gold with green highlights. And there are three bugs on him!” Now I’m interested, squinting my eyes to see the three tiny red bugs that are biting the leafhopper.

At this point, the world around me is a lot more intricate than I knew before this hike. “Where do you start with nature if you don’t know much about it?” I ask. “Start in your own backyard,” he says without hesitation. “You have a big lawn and you probably have it mowed. See what you can find that is not grass and then find a field guide that you like.”

John never perceives himself as an expert. “I’m just a guy who is interested in what’s going on,” he says. “I have no problem being corrected. I’m just like the Platte River – I am 1 mile wide and 1 inch deep.”

Looking at the wet rocks under his feet, he says, “There is not a day that goes by without a mystery that needs to be investigated.”

“There are no square rooms here,” Patty says, as she walks barefoot through the carpeted house giving a tour. “This is Merlin,” she says, pointing to a ceramic wizard statue near the meditation alcove. “And this is the goddess room,” she says, gesturing to the upstairs bedroom.

In the gazebo, Patty talks about Arbo Lake, visible through the screen. “We own 15 acres of land and 2 acres of underwater.” The lake, which sprawls in front of Rainbow Ranch and a few other homes, is a non-meandering lake – which means that when you own the lakeshore, you also own the lake bottom.

The land where Rainbow Ranch sits is a big part of local history. In the late 1800s, there was a large structure used as a weigh station on the property – the only weigh station between Grand Rapids and Big Fork. The owners kept hardboiled eggs in a sawdust barrel on the porch for hundreds of (mostly) men that would wander by on their long journeys.

There is something calming about sitting around the kitchen table with Patty, Mary, and Facilitator Naomi Greene. We sip catalog ordered tea from clay mugs as Mary and Patty talk about their wedding on the property. “There were 150 guests from so many different communities,” Mary says.

Patty points out a vase sitting on top of a hope cabinet in the living room. “This is a Navajo wedding vase. We each put water from one of the spouts on our hands to get rid of the negative past.”

Balloons are tied to furniture and centerpieces around the living room – remnants of Friday’s going away gathering for a friend moving to Kansas. There are many other events that happen on this land: The PRIDE Picnic, anniversary camp outs, and multiple dinner parties.

There is also a fire circle deeper in the surrounding pine forest. Patty and Mary remember an Incan Shamanic ritual they had there once. “We buried a despacho and thought of things in our lives we wanted to transform in a hurry,” Mary says.

“And then a bear dug it up!” Patty laughs.

“My shoulder hurts, her back hurts, my neck is tired, her arms are stiff,” Patty says downstairs, as I admire her woodstove. Mary and Patty are selling Rainbow Ranch.

“It must be hard to sell something you love so much,” I say.

“Yes,” Patty says nostalgically. “We certainly have had some amazing experiences here.”

Bill Davis and I sit at his kitchen table eating ice cream, peaches, and shortbread. Gizmo, the gray wide-eyed house cat sits comfortably on the floor. “Cats and radio seem to go together,” Bill says. When Bill is downstairs in “The Ham Shack,” the basement where he operates his amateur radio station, K0AWU, Gizmo sometimes sits on his lap.

A self-proclaimed ëtinkerer,’ Bill has built two radio towers that stand tall in the middle of milkweed, green beans, zucchini, and chives. “I only grow things that are okay if they’re trampled,” Bill’s wife Pat Davis says. “If there’s trouble, it’s up and down, up and down the towers.”

Today, there are 3 million ham (amateur radio) operators in the world. Bill started his interest in the hobby at 14 years old after reading a Boys Life magazine story. In this fantasy, some kids his age were able to find evil pirates through the signals on a shortwave radio they listened to in their attic. “I liked how they were able to use radio to get the bad guys,” Bill remembers.

Bill bought his first receiver from Sears and Roebuck. He built a transmitter and learned Morse code. “I used a knife on the kitchen table. I used the blade of the knife as a key, tapping on the tabletop, learning to send Morse code with my Boy Scout manual in front of me. And then it came through as a symphony of signals out of that radio.”

“As a kid, I had never traveled too far outside Marshall, Missouri. I only knew farming.” Bill says. “Ham radio opened my eyes to new cultures and people – noble laureates, astronomers, physicians, airline pilots, and farmers too – all with the common interest of radio.”

Downstairs in the basement, there are voices in slow-motion coming through the static on the single sideband radio. “A bit like Donald Duck, right?” Bill laughs.

“It’s weird who you run into and how you run into them. It’s a lot like fishing: You throw a line out – like a CQ – and you never know who you might hook,” Bill says.

Bill sits in his cushioned office chair, holding the transceiver microphone close to his mouth. “CQ, CQ this is K0AWU, Grand Rapids, Minnesota.” He responds to a call from Fort Lucie, Florida. This man’s name is Al. Bill hands me the mike. “How did you first get started? Over,” I stutter through the static.

Al talks about beginning amateur radio when he was in the Air Force in the 1950s. “I’m curious,” I say to Al, clicking the mike, “Can you tell me about one of the most interesting conversations you’ve had on amateur radio. Over.”

Al tells a story about a soldier on a ship coming back from Vietnam who answered his radio call. The soldier wanted Al to get in touch with his wife. “The amount of cuss words comin’ out of that woman’s mouth was crazy. She thought it was a hoax,” Al says. The soldier asked Al to tell his wife about the two white dogs that [they] share together. “Then there were lots of tears,” Al remembers. “The woman cried and cried to me over the phone, knowing that I talked to her husband. Over.”

Bill’s basement is full of radio equipment, amateur radio awards, airplane posters and QSL cards. “[QSL cards] are written confirmations of a conversation,” Bill says. Bill’s walls are decorated with QSL cards. His goal is to talk to all 50 states at a frequency of 2 Meters. Right now, he is missing Alaska and Nevada. Bill has had over 14,000 conversations since 2000. He has talked to 90 different countries, including 27 contacts in Slovenia and 2 contacts in the Canary Islands.

Conversation in amateur radio is called rag-chew. “Ham radio is like the Sunday kitchen table. There are some issues that generally aren’t discussed,” Bill states. “But depending on who you’re talking to, the conversations can be wide ranging. Much of ham radio has to do with just listening to the conversations of others. That is the magic of roving the bands,” Bill says.

Grand Rapids has a population of less than 8,000 people. There are over 100 volunteers at KAXE, a grassroots radio station in Northern Minnesota. KAXE used to be located at a local college, but has moved to a beautiful one-level building designed by an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright. The kitchen is the best part, featuring bright green walls, a bottomless coffee pot, and the largest collection of communal Tupperware I have ever seen.

When we were on the air with Heidi and her co-host John Bauer for the Friday morning show, we were challenged to an on-air spelling bee (”May We Have a Word With You”). We passed the first two words, but could not quite figure out how to spell ësesquacentennial.’ That’s alright, we still won some t-shirts with a quote on the back from Laura Erickson, host of For the Birds:

“Small, independent, intelligent, community-spirited, and friendly. That’s the chickadee and that’s KAXE…”

And I happen to agree. MobileBooth West looks forward to several weeks with the energetic folks at KAXE and the incomparable hospitality of Northern Minnesotans.