An Iron Range writer, new to the Editorial Board, reflects on how the state connects

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Traveling between my home just north of the Iron Range and the downtown Minneapolis headquarters of the Minnesota Star Tribune reminds me of the strength and struggle of being a Minnesotan.

Struggle #1: Resisting gas station snacks.

Struggle #2: Solving all the problems.

Lately, I’ve had plenty of travel time to contemplate the length and depth of our sky-tinted state. Today, I begin my new role as a columnist and member of the Editorial Board at the Strib. They tell me I’m the first editorial writer to be based in northern Minnesota in the history of the organization.

My journey begins on a dirt road that ducks under a massive power line not far from our house. This high-capacity transmission line wheels electricity from hydroelectric dams in Canada. That is, provided the current trade war doesn’t render the whole contraption into an elaborate piece of metal art.

Even if our government stops antagonizing our northern neighbors, these imposing towers — and those like them throughout Minnesota — remind that our grid isn’t built for the surge in electrical demand that’s coming. Rural Minnesota, in particular, will soon face hard choices about how and where we generate power.

A little further down my trek, I cut across Hibbing Taconite on a road that hugs the tailings dam on its way through an active iron mine. The ore is running out. Everyone knows it. They could get more, but that requires a deal between the mine’s squabbling co-owners, Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel. Hundreds of jobs hang in the balance, among thousands more across the region.

In Hibbing, Minn., the town of my birth, I see a downtown disrupted from previous greatness. There is beauty here, and opportunity, but so much work and so little capital to invest. This story is repeated across the main drags of towns across the state.

Later on, between Floodwood and Cromwell, I pass a massive storage yard stacked with treated wood beams bleached in the sun of three summers. They were used to move heavy equipment through the woods to build the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline expansion in 2021. Too valuable to bury, too oily to burn, here they sit.

It reminds of the controversy not long ago, between forces seeking jobs and those seeking environmental protection. Yard signs dotted the back roads for and against, mostly “for” in my neighborhood. I know people who wore “Yes on Line 3” T-shirts.

But just a few years later, these wood beams sit forgotten along Hwy. 73, surrounded by barbed wire to discourage scavengers. The pipeline jobs are gone, but for a few. The environmental risk, already realized by a small leak two years ago, now unfolds as a century-long maintenance equation. I expect the T-shirts have already made their way to the local thrift shop.

In Kettle River, I see a little boy and girl ferociously pedaling small bikes down the sidewalk. Their mother runs behind. I can’t tell if she’s exercising or trying to catch them. Is there a difference? Given the cost of child care, parenthood can feel like an endless chase whether one chooses a career or staying home.

And where will that home be? As I speed down I-35, I see new housing developments — though not as many as we saw years ago. Few can afford these houses. Hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans are looking for homes that cost less than $100,000 — what we once called “starter houses” — and realizing that they no longer exist.

As I arrive in the city, I remember how much of my life I have spent in the woods of northern Minnesota. Nearly all of it. As a small-town writer and community college instructor, this is the big time and what a lot of my relatives would call “the scary city.” But as dissimilar as country and city might seem, I see connecting paths.

Somewhere deep in the overgrown woods near my house lies a railroad grade you can’t see from the road. Men tore out the narrow-gauge tracks long before anyone alive was born and you’d have a hard time finding evidence it was ever there, but it was. That steel track carried lumber that built this city, and workers who populated small towns across Minnesota. It followed paths cut centuries earlier by our Indigenous neighbors.

As connected as we are through our phones and high-speed networks, we forget the networks that connect us as human beings. We all came here on the premise that we could create a good life in a place where the weather tries to kill us. For all our differences, we share enough passion for Minnesota to keep us warm through winter.

When I started teaching 21 years ago, my working-class students told me their hopes and dreams. Today, they tell me they’re broke, that they can’t afford rent and don’t see how they’ll ever own a house. Far too many train for jobs they don’t want because they need the money. Imagination and ambition were replaced by fear. In the same period of time, technology and the economy grew at historic rates, untold profits concentrated in the hands of would-be emperors and warlords.

That’s not right, nor is this injustice confined to one part of our state. This chronic, malicious imbalance must be corrected, and that can only happen if we understand how our system fails our society. Thus, I excuse myself from the classroom for an assignment of my own.

For years I’ve instructed students to write a thesis. Here’s mine: In this column, I will write for people who lack geographic, political or economic power, break down complex issues in interesting ways and argue passionately for goals that I hope might unite us.

Read it. Wrap fish in it. Write back. Don’t expect me to hang around the office, though. I’ll be on the road.