Travel North   We are combining, curiously, our trip north back to New York with a side trip to Minnesota. We are presently sitting on Amtrak's Autotrain in a sleeper (handicapped) going north with Georgia scenery flying by. We're looking forward to a very pleasant dinner, and then in the morning we'll be near Washington. We'll spend the night at the DuPont Hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, and then, leaving the car at the Philadelphia airport, fly the next day from Philadelphia to Minnesota. On our return we'll continue to New York.

The Autotrain is a superliner, which means it's two-level. The handicapped room is downstairs. In the middle of the car is a staircase that leads to the upper level, which has more sleepers, and to the lounge and dining car. (In the dining car, the kitchen is downstairs.) They always offer to bring us dinner downstairs, but then you lose the atmosphere of the dining car, so we manage to make it upstairs.

I told a story at dinner to dining companions we had met, and I will repeat it here. We belong to the Tampa Streetcar Society, which has succeeded in bringing a new streetcar line back to Tampa. At a reception last month celebrating that fact, I was helping Bev with some hors d'oeuvres and wine, and a woman struck up a conversation. She then ventured a guess that I get more pleasure out of helping Bev than Bev gets from being helped. I told her she was very perceptive.

Minnesota Trilogy   Bev is from Minnesota, we were married there, and I've been visiting there for four decades. When we were there just this month last year, I had some thoughts about Minnesota I wanted to write up, but I never got to it. I've spent a whole year writing it in my head, so it should be easy to just put down now. Rather than discussing people, I tend to write about place, and the subjects tend to be geography, history, and language. I'm compiling these thoughts over the next letters as a trilogy.

Minnesota Trilogy I - A Geographic Note   People travel for different reasons, to see sights, to visit people, on business, to shop, to golf. Presumably each envisions where they're going with their mental eye focused on the area of interest, Grandma's house, the mall, sights, whatever.

Bev and I have always envisioned places based on the geography and history of the location. New York is not Times Square to us. It's New Amsterdam, where the Dutch settled at the southern tip of Manhattan. It's now the financial district around Wall Street. It is not a coincidence that it's there where we live. Geographically as well as historically, it's the first thing you see of Manhattan sailing into the harbor. In my mind there is a bull's eye centered on this area emaning significance outward to the areas around it.

There is an equivalent area in the Twin Cities. In my mind it is the centerpoint of Minnesota, where relevance begins and from where it emanates.

The Mississippi River enters the area from the north to divide Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Below Minneapolis, the Minnesota River comes from the west. They merge below some river bluffs. This confluence is to me the Navel of Minnesota. In my mind, everything of significance emanated from here.

The border of the Ice Age glaciers cut across Minnesota as they cut across New York City and Long Island. It was glacial melt that started the river system that runs down the middle of the US to the Gulf of Mexico. But it's not exactly how you'd imagine. Amazingly, it wasn't the Mississippi River that did it.

The greatest bulk of the water from the glacial runoff entered what is now the Twin Cities area from the west. We are talking ten thousand years ago. In other words, all this water came down what is now called the Minnesota River, which then picked up the smaller Mississippi River at these bluffs. The Minnesota River then continued down the center of the continent, collecting all the other rivers and emptying into the Gulf. The Minnesota River carved out that river valley.

But then, as ever, fortunes changed. The Minnesota River had a bit more than just fifteen minutes of fame, it was probably a few thousand years, but eventually the glacial runoff shifted. More water began to flow to the Mississippi in the north than to the Minnesota in the west. In modern times we look at the flow of the Mississippi reaching this point, and interpret that, in a reversal, it is the river that picks up the Minnesota. The Mississippi gets the credit for the entire valley going south.

"What ifs" can be a waste of time, but they're always fun. What if the shift hadn't taken place? Would the entire length of the valley to the Gulf be called the Minnesota River today, with the Mississippi just one of many entering it? Today the state at the northern end is named Minnesota after the lesser river and the state near the southern end is named Mississippi after the major river. Under the circumstance of the Minnesota being the major river, would we today have in the south Natchez, Minnesota, and Biloxi, Minnesota? Would we then also have in the north Minneapolis, Mississippi, and Duluth, Mississippi? The mind boggles.