CLITHERALL, Minn. - As Gov. Tim Walz enters the home stretch as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, I have to say I never understood why everybody got mad at him for saying greater Minnesota is “mostly rocks and cows.”
I mean, he’s mostly right.
Farmers know it. You walk your fields in the spring, and what are you doing? Picking rock, right? Moving those chunks of granite or whatnot that have floated to the surface over the past year so they don’t damage your planter or harvest equipment.
Who doesn’t have a few rockpiles along the edges of their farm fields? You can find some pretty nice boulders there, and lake people will actually buy them for their shorelines or maybe as garden statements.
Shoot, we have whole counties and cities named after rocks. Rock County. Big Stone County. Pipestone city and county. Granite Falls. Sandstone. Rockford. Rockville. Rock Creek.
There’s Rollingstone in Winona County (which presumably gathers no moss). There’s Marble in Itasca County. In Pipestone, there’s Jasper, which could be argued is quartz, not rock, but if you were walking over it at twilight you wouldn’t know the difference.
Crow Wing County has Ironton. St. Louis County has Iron Junction and Mountain Iron as well as Biwabik, which comes from the Ojibwe word for iron.
Otter Tail County has Dent, which is what happens if a rock hits your car. (Apologies in advance, my Otter Tail County neighbors!)