Picture this, you find yourself standing in the middle of a forest glen. There is no noise but the wind brushing the pines and the rustle of dried leaves beneath your feet. Your phone has no reception and your mind is finally quiet.

When you turn around, you see your neighbor, waving at you. They have strong opinions and a bumper sticker you don’t love, but you talk to each other, usually about weather patterns and the late-season snowpack. Your neighbor tells you which lake he’s been fishing, you tell him where you’ve been hiking. No political debates. Just a shared curiosity about the world right outside our doors.

We live in an age where we’re constantly being told who we’re supposed to disagree with. But outside, with our boots muddy from spring soil, those divisions feel softer. In Minnesota, loving where you live is something that cuts across every political or cultural line they try to draw. You see it in the care people take clearing trails in the Boundary Waters after a storm. In the conversations that spark between strangers at a trout stream. In the reverence for the North Shore, whether you call it gichi-onigamiing or Grand Marais.

This isn’t a story the news likes to tell. It doesn’t sell headlines, people getting along, collaborating quietly, caring for a collective space for no other reason than they treasure it. But it’s happening. And maybe that’s what makes our outdoor spaces so powerful, they remind us who we are beneath the noise.

When the world feels fractured, the answer might be as simple as stepping outside, walking through a patch of prairie, standing under the hush of old white pines, or going for a plunge in a frozen lake.  Our landscapes don’t filter us by viewpoint. They contain our stories, yes, but they also help us write new ones, ones where humility and togetherness feel more natural than division.

So if you’re feeling tired of the headlines, try replacing them, just for a day, with the sound of wind and water and birdsong. You’ll likely find something steadier, something older and wiser than any podcast or bumper sticker could offer.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll spot someone else out there who sees what you see. Who loves what you love. Who, despite all odds and algorithms, is standing on the same ground you are, literally and figuratively.