North

"At dawn I flew to Detroit, for a trip into the interior to reach Lincoln, Nebraska...the actual heart of this country, driving through a sea of grass, then a sea of corn, a sea of wheat, then back north to the upper reaches of Minnesota, where the forest is a vast green sea, its treetops rippling like green water in the wind." -- Jim Harrison*

What does this post have to do with retirement finance or markets or investing? Nothing.

Eight years ago I found myself exiled to Florida more or less against my will. I would say that living in Florida is as close to living in a foreign country (and it has nothing to do with the climate, btw) while still being in the US as living in Vermont or California or Gary Indiana might be -- but I think that would just irritate Vermontians or Californians or people that live in Gary…or Floridians for that matter. What I will say is that I spent at least 50 years in MN and I consider that my homeland turf. I once, when I was a very young adult, spent two years in Los Angeles, a place that reminds me of Florida for a lot of reasons. When I was done with LA, I threw everything in my car that fit and tossed or donated everything else and I drove northeast in the straightest line I could contrive. When I finally hit eastern Nebraska or Western Iowa, I don't remember the exact place, the hills started to roll and the agriculture started to look familiar and the arbor-scape looked like memory. I had the most profound sense of being -- or getting very close to -- home. I could smell it.

Now, in the coming weeks, I am making my 58th pilgrimage north (my family took me to northern MN starting on my first birthday in 1959 and I have gone there every year since) to take a child to a camp that hides itself between the lakes and pines of the far north. Ignoring the infinite amount of time before my birth and the equally long stretch of time that will unfold after my death, this pilgrimage, in this precise moment, to a place "where the forest is a vast green sea, its treetops rippling like green water in the wind " could not make me any happier. My children mock my affection for and interest in trees (and hills too I suppose if I were to make a point of it) but they are young and do not understand.

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* Jim Harrison, better known for his screenplays and novels than his fantastic writing on food and cooking, sadly passed away this year, 2016.