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Strolling the Lakewalk, an eight-mile stretch of trail for pedestrians and bikes along Lake Superior. Laura Marland photos.

Many Americans are so fed up with Donald Trump and his resurrection in glory that we are looking at fleeing the country.

Mexico isn’t all that friendly anymore. Gee, I wonder why. Europe’s got its own problems. And many countries’ immigration authorities don’t want anyone who is old, disabled or not rich — such as my partner and me.

If you’re not about to jump on the next plane out of the country, should you move to this northern, heavily industrialized Shangri-La? Here’s my subjective take on that: Duluth is one of the best places in the U.S. — and I’ve traveled to almost every state.

But Duluth is not for everybody.

Let me explain.

Duluth, Minnesota made the news in 2019 when a Harvard professor deemed it a “climate refuge city.”

I moved here from a Red state in 2015 for an array of climate-related, economic and political reasons. I have never seriously regretted moving to Duluth, except when I’ve had to chop ice and frozen snow from my vehicle in the dark at 6 am.

Before I left in 2015, it was clear that the world was getting hotter. I knew it was going to keep getting even hotter because scientists said the ice caps were melting and that would reduce the sun’s reflectivity on the planet, rapidly warming it as the frozen areas shrink.

I don’t like heat.

We are above the 46th Parallel, nestled in a corner of Lake Superior. Overall, we have long, cold, dark, snowy winters, often followed by wet, cool springs and summers.

The darkness is worse than the cold, if you’re not used to it.

In midwinter, the sun comes up and it’s dark. It gets progressively darker and then it’s really dark for almost 16 hours. The darkness, more than the cold, got me down when I moved here.

But I’ve adapted. I know that winter is a good time to do many things I like to do — read, write and watch movies. Some people, on the other hand, find the darkness so depressing they need treatment.

Climate change has altered our weather. The winter of 2022–23 was extremely snowy. The winter of 2023–2024 featured extremely warm temperatures and almost zero snow. It’s been getting warmer in the ten years since I’ve been here.

Many Duluthians weren’t thrilled about last winter. Without snow, winter in the American Midwest is plain ugly. The temperatures were obviously indicative of climate change, and that was pretty scary for those of us with a functioning brain.

Today in mid-January, 2025, I am looking out my Duluth window at snow, which has been falling off and on for days. The temperature right now is 11 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind chill is 2 below.

However, this doesn’t mean climate change has magically disappeared.

The cold blasts we’re experiencing are due to expansion of the polar vortex, which is wind that normally circles around the North Pole. The polar vortex expansion may or may not be caused by climate change, according to scientists.

So how will the weather be when you arrive sometime in 2025? All I can tell you is that one 45-day forecast, which I get on the free version of the Accuweather app, says daily highs will start to climb out of the freezing range at the end of February, and snow will continue to fall on many February days. So far, these long-range forecasts have given me an accurate picture of what’s ahead.

In my experience, the forecast for February means March temperatures will probably go up and down a lot. That pattern of chilly days followed by warm days will continue into May, when it may snow.

Seriously. It has snowed in May since I’ve been here.

Many summer days are in the 80s. In the high 90s, it may get intolerable or even dangerous for many Minnesotans acclimated to cold weather. But periods of high heat and humidity are still short.

The month of June makes it worth suffering through the winter. It’s when the lilacs are out. We have a lot of lilacs.

Our mosquitoes are famous. If you are going to camp, bring full netting gear. Or do what I do — skip the woods entirely between late May and early August, and stay close to Lake Superior, where the breeze blows them away.

That giant lake, named Gitche Gumee by Native Americans, is cold.

I’ve been known to swim in it during the week or two before and after the summer solstice. That’s when the shore temperature along Park Point, a sandbar with houses on it and a beach at the outer end, may rise about 70 degrees, which is tolerable for swimming.

We Duluthians are cozy people. We like to eat and drink. We like to gather in pubs and coffee shops in the winter, play games and meet with our knitting groups. You can join political groups, arts groups and hiking groups.

We are not known for being particularly fashion-conscious. In all the years I’ve lived in Duluth, I’ve seen two women who weren’t about to get married daring to wear spike heels on these rough, hilly streets, some of which are still cobblestoned.

Although we don’t dress like city sophisticates, we have a large annual art festival on the lakefront, two independent movie theaters, live plays, local music and music festivals featuring nationally known artists in a venue on the water, Bayfront.

We have legal weed. You can not only smoke, you can grow your own.

We also have a lot of good, old-fashioned, God-fearing, law-abiding drunks, making AA and sobriety organizations nice places to meet all the right people if you get tired of the bar and brewery scene.

Duluthians are warm and friendly. They’re cold and suspicious. They’ve worked too hard. They’re enjoying the fruits of their labors. They’re vastly underappreciated, overtaxed, under-informed, bitter and mean. They’re smart, educated, talented, accomplished, entrepreneurial and civic-minded.

But there is such a thing as a Duluthian. We take the bad with the good, and we’re tougher than most.

. . . women in Minnesota have full reproductive rights.

Minnesota is, politically, not the worst place to be. If you prefer a Blue state, we’ve got it down, for now. As you may have heard, we retained Tim Walz as our governor. Democrats are also in the offices of secretary of state and attorney general and control both state legislature chambers.

Minnesotans love politics. We have the highest voter turnout in the nation — 79.96%, according to the World Population Review.

Yes, we have high state taxes and a budget surplus. We do terrible things with that surplus, such as making sure schoolchildren are fed. Yet the cost of living is low compared to other Blue states.

We have a massive homeless problem in Duluth. When I worked in the Warming Center during the pandemic, I learned that many of the most intractable cases of chronic homelessness are due to untreated mental health problems and chronic addiction. Underlying that is trauma.

Others would say there are so many homeless here because we coddle the poor. There’s truth to that—thanks mainly to CHUM, or Churches United in Ministry, we don’t let them starve or freeze to death.

The homeless problem is also due to a shortage of low-cost housing, a rough employment climate, discrimination against ex-cons, and a steady supply of fentanyl and other illegal drugs.

Mayor Roger Reinert’s proposed solutions involve criminalizing homeless camps. Reinert is good for comic relief, if you’re into dark comedy.

The general population of Minnesota is educated. In Duluth, we have a community college, a solid, private liberal arts college, and a campus of the University of Minnesota. Public schools are well-funded, but need improvement.

Last but not least, women in Minnesota have full reproductive rights.

Duluth is a great place to work.

At home, at your desk, as a digital nomad.

If you come here without a job you may find yourself in a bad way unless you either work remotely or in the healthcare industry — we have two hospitals and lots of ancillary healthcare jobs.

We have city, county, and state and government jobs. You might find opportunities in entertainment, tourism, architecture or construction. Check the job situation and get a solid offer here before leaving.

Or just transplant your digital nomad lifestyle to Duluth.

There is an affordable housing shortage, but there are also vacancies because we have lots of recently renovated and new buildings with units that start in the range of $1000-$1200 a month for a studio. We don’t have enough good jobs to support that kind of market.

However, I dug deep into listings. On Craigslist, on January 17, 2025, I found an efficiency unit with a shared bathroom for $475, all utilities paid by tenants. On Zillow, on January 18, I found a 2-bedroom, 1-bath apartment for $600.

When I searched for Duluth homes on Zillow, I got 132 results, starting at homes less than $200,000, and 3 houses in Duluth less than $100,000.

A request: If you are moving here from, say, California, with money from the house you just sold jingling in your pocket, please don’t start bidding wars on the houses. Driving prices up hurts longer-term residents.

Google the online MIT Living Wage Calculator. It says that if you are a single person living in Duluth, a living wage will be $19.38 an hour. However, look at their expense calculations, because they’re pretty basic.

If you do need a car — and you probably do — make sure it can climb steep hills covered with packed snow. I don’t want to watch you on the hill outside my window, struggling to get up there and sliding back down.

A state road sign in green and white by the side of a road curving into the distance. The sign lists the miles to several destinations, including “Canadian border.” The miles are listed as 145. Pine forests line the roadway and the skies are partly cloudy.

I have a small SUV because when I arrived, I wanted to be able to explore the area safely. There is much to see around here, starting with the fabled Highway 61, which runs north along the shoreline from Duluth to the Canadian border.

You can blast out over the top of Wisconsin on Route 2, which offers almost nothing to see, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and especially to the massive Keeweenaw Peninsula. It’s supposed to be about four or five hours from Duluth to Copper Harbor at the peninsula’s tip. But you won’t make it in that time because there’s too much to see along the way.

A massive bridge rises above rippling blue water. The bridge spans a short distance from a hilly landmass seen on the horizon.

To get to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula you have to cross this bridge. Both Keweenaw’s climate and its architecture rival Duluth’s for sheer brutalism. Laura Marland photo

You can spend an hour and a half driving from Duluth up the scenic Bayfield Peninsula of Wisconsin, which also juts out into Lake Superior. From there, you can take a ferry to the Apostle Islands.

You can pack your tent and head for the Boundary Waters, a protected wilderness between the U.S and Canada.

Here’s how to think of Duluth. Imagine an aging, Rust Belt city that has tried and to some extent succeeded in becoming a tourist hub. Now imagine that city plunked down next to ten trillion gallons of fresh, clean water, glittering in the sun.

Surround it with ships, docks, and mining cars full of iron ore. Around it are miles and miles of woods, hilly outcroppings topped with pine and birch, small lakes and bears that often wander into town.

A lot of people, young and old, would benefit by moving to Duluth. But here’s one type of person who would do particularly well here.

You’re young or youngish, healthy, and outdoorsy. You have some money, a decent credit score, and a career you can import to Duluth. You’re into a casual, simple but wired and on-grid lifestyle. You have no problems making friends quickly.

You care enough about others to avoid making a bad housing situation worse. You don’t mind paying more taxes if you like the purpose of paying them.

So start checking the job and housing listings. Figure out how you’re going to get around. Pack heavily soled boots and shoes, flannel, jeans, down jackets, woolly caps and thick socks.

I trust you won’t bring a MAGA hat.

Wherever you go, I wish you a soft landing.