![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
If Duluth wasn't already one of the best hiking cities in the nation, it definitely is now.
Creeks, ravines, bays and lakefront have given it spectacular terrain for the Congdon Park, Park Point and Western Waterfront
trails (See Duluth walks).
Now, 48 miles of the Superior Hiking Trail stretch from Jay Cooke State Park to the northeast end of Duluth, roughly following
the same ridges and glacial beach terraces used by Skyline Parkway.
On Duluth's Hawk Ridge, a bird in the hand is worth at least two in the sky.
They're impressive when spotted overhead. But up close, it's easier to get to know a bird — say, the northern goshawk, a fierce predator whose image once adorned the helmet of Attila the Hun.
As she held a young goshawk by the legs, naturalist Willow Maser struggled to make herself heard above its high-pitched screeches.
In Duluth, you can lead a child to water — but just try leading her away.
“Mom, it’d be worth moving to Duluth just so we could go to this beach a lot,’’ said my daughter Madeleine, jumping from rock to rock at Brighton Beach.
Duluth, once the ugly duckling of Lake Superior, now is one of the best places in Minnesota to take children. On Canal Park, the lineup of tourist attractions can keep a family entertained for days.
Once, a wind-whipped sand spit was not the most desirable address in Duluth.
The Ojibwe preferred the lush estuary of the St. Louis River, which flows into Lake Superior at what today is Duluth-Superior Harbor. The French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, for whom the city was named, didn’t waste much time on the lakefront when he arrived in 1679. Nor did the early fur traders, who hustled straight up the St. Louis, which, via the little Savanna River, connects Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
The St. Louis looks sleepy, but it's the largest Lake Superior tributary in the United States. With Ontario's Nipigon River, it contributes about one-fourth of the lake's annual water input.
It took a servant a day and a half to polish one of their chandeliers. It took three Norwegian craftsmen three years to carve their woodwork.
Still, it's hard to begrudge Chester and Clara Congdon their nice things, because apparently they were very nice people.
Chester gave 11 miles of Lake Superior shoreline to the people of Duluth and made sure it was preserved for them in perpetuity. Clara donated her time and resources to the Methodist church; her servants ate the same meals she did and were paid twice as much as others.
In 1890, Duluth was a treasure chest waiting to be opened.
It sat at the foot of Lake Superior, connected to the steel mills and cities of the East by water. White-pine forests lay to the south and west, and rich veins of iron ore to the north. It couldn’t fail to make money for the men who came to tap its riches, and it didn’t.
John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan swooped in, made killings and took the profits back to New York. But other millionaires — in the 1910s, Duluth had more per capita than any other city in the world — stayed, building mansions that remain as monuments to a bygone opulence.
One March, I went up to Duluth but woke up in Siberia.
Twenty inches of snow had fallen overnight. A savage 70 mph wind was howling around the glass-walled lobby of the Willard Munger Inn. Swirling snow had turned the air white.
But then my niece and I noticed cars crawling along Grand Avenue. Then more cars. So we bundled up and got in our car, and to our surprise, made it all the way across town to Lester Park. Dozens of other skiers already had been on its Lester-Amity Ski Trail, creating tracks that we gratefully followed into the sheltering forest.
It's a hot Saturday in Duluth, and Canal Park is jam-packed.
A line of cars waits to cross the Aerial Lift Bridge; people want to get to the beach or the art fair on Park Point. Tourists mill around the marine museum, shops and restaurants. Young men in souped-up trucks slowly cruise along Canal Park Drive, and young girls in town for a soccer tournament rove the sidewalks in packs, trailed by their parents.
It seems as if every tourist and teenager in town is in Canal Park.
In summer and fall, festive Canal Park draws the crowds. But when cold winds blow in winter, a brewery suddenly looks much
better.
Now, the complex also boasts a day spa, a nightclub, a dinner theater, a brewery and a coffeehouse — everything anyone could want for a little getaway, all under one roof.
My friend Judy and I drove up on a gray Wednesday in November, stopping first at the Depot for the free monthly antique appraisal. Appraiser Dan Sershon couldn't muster much interest in the plates Judy had brought, but when we asked him to tell us the most interesting thing he'd seen, he looked over our shoulders and said, "That lamp that's going to come up next.''
A few steps into the forest, and it hit.
The tang of cedar bark and pine needles, moistened by droplets of mist from waterfalls. The loamy richness of earth carpeted by ferns.
It was that north-woods perfume all Minnesotans instantly recognize, a powerful eau de outdoors that gladdened my heart and also made it sink with the realization that I'd stayed in the city far, far too long.
I like Duluth. I like watching the ore boats, I like strolling on the Lake Walk — in fact, I like anything that gives me a good view of mercurial Lake Superior, which pounds away at the foot of the hills on which the city is built.
I even like Duluth in the winter, when, if you don't keep moving, you might wind up as stiff as the bronze statues that line the lakefront.
And I do move in Duluth, right down the slopes of Spirit Mountain, which, not coincidentally, give me great views of Lake
Superior. And I do it cheap, at least on weekdays.
