Picture this: it’s 4:00pm and you’re wrapping up work for the day. It’s a bluesky afternoon, and the sun won’t set for hours. As you walk home via the quiet residential streets of your small, wilderness edge community – or drive along gently winding two-lane roads toward your backwoods perch – you contemplate whether to toss the canoe on top of the car and go for an evening paddle with your fishing rod on a Boundary Waters Canoe Area lake, or to bring your dog out for a hike in the Superior National Forest.
Whether you dream of fat tire biking on infinite gravel roads, or hearing a loon call from the porch of your homestead, you are not alone. Visions like these have been inspiring people to relocate to northeast Minnesota’s Wilderness-edge communities for decades.
A majority of new residents chose Wilderness-edge communities, in part, for values alignment. These values include access to outdoor recreation, closeness to nature, and a slower pace of life. In fact, only ⅓ of recent newcomers chose their location primarily for a job.
The Boundary Waters Connect team understands that relocating and making a home somewhere new is exciting and challenging at the same time. Over the next several weeks we’ll be introducing you to folks who relocated to the Wilderness-edge communities of northeast Minnesota.
This week you’ll meet Sven, who moved to a 60-acre sugarbush outside of Grand Marais with his two kids several years ago. As you’ll hear Sven say, “The idea was to raise our kids closer to nature.” His family loves having Wilderness right outside their back door, and the ability to live close to the land. Sven and his kids cherish being a part of a community that grasps onto the fleeting moments nestled in between the changing seasons – much like the ones we are experiencing now.