From Wild Current to Quiet Intentionality
There are places in Minnesota that feel stitched into family memory like legacy resorts with aging cabins, multigenerational photo albums, and the comforting nostalgia of summers long past. I understand why people return to them year after year, carrying childhood stories like talismans. But as I explored those resorts, I felt an immediate knowing: this is not my terrain.
My relationship with nature has been a long, spiraling arc that has been shaped by age, inner work, seasons of solitude, and the evolution of who I’ve become.
In my twenties, nature meant freedom and chaos. Tent camping on the Apostle Islands with friends, hauling up more beer than water, waking to entire days of sun and dehydration and laughter. Back then, the wilderness was an extension of youth — wild, unfiltered, and communal.
My thirties ushered in a quieter shift.
Solo hiking day trips, collecting passport stamps for Minnesota state parks, a growing desire to meet the land in a way that was meaningful for me. I started booking overnight stays in camper cabins in bluff country. It was just me, a small shelter, and the night. I still remember trying to start a campfire with nothing but a lighter, holding the tiny flame against a full log as if determination alone would make it catch. (It didn’t.) Still, those moments taught me more than any perfectly executed fire ever could.
What I didn’t realize then was that I was slowly walking into the era of presence.
In my forties, nature found me again but this time softened, curated, and intentional. Stays at boutique hotels paired with state park hikes. Micro-cabins with minimal design and quiet forest light. And now, weekends like this one in Nisswa with real plants in the room, the clean Scandinavian lines, the integration of nature and intentional design. Spaces that meet me where I am now: contemplative, grounded, selective, and attuned.
This version of nature still holds my wild twenties and my fumbling thirties, but it’s my intentional forties that finally feel matched to the woman I’ve become. It’s about the kind of environment that invites me inward, opens the senses, and honors the path I’m walking. Places like this remind me that my relationship with nature has grown up with me and continues to reveal new expressions of who I am becoming. And in doing so, creating my own lineage of meaning.
Reflection Question
How has your own relationship with nature shifted across different phases of your life?
Where do you find yourself most at home in nature today, and what does that reveal about your current season of becoming?