Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell once wrote a song about our vanishing green spaces, entitled "They Paved Paradise…and Put Up a Parking Lot." One of its lyrics states an obvious truth, that "…you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. " I had some similar thoughts just a week ago, as my wife and I drove our son almost 500 miles from home to Indiana, the destination for his first year of college.

When you cover territory in four states you have a chance to do a little "comparison shopping," to size up by your own particular standards the appeal of the landscape through which you're traveling. I returned home with a certain amount of melancholy over leaving my son so far away. But I also returned home with gratitude that I live where I do, and have the quantity and quality of outdoor opportunities that make Minnesota such a great place to live.

I know it would be inaccurate to characterize our neighbor states as being devoid of quality opportunities to fish, hunt, and enjoy other outdoor pastimes. There may be some good pheasant hunting in parts of Illinois and Indiana, considering how much of those states is devoted to growing corn and other crops. Probably pretty decent deer hunting, too, considering how adaptable deer are, and how well deer can thrive in an agricultural environment.

But there is a vast difference in the variety of landscapes and outdoor opportunities found in Wisconsin and Minnesota, compared to the more easterly Midwestern states. Those who have fished, hunted, camped, hiked or have just driven Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior can't help but be struck but the wild, natural character of this still-rugged land, despite its nearness to Duluth. Much the same can be said of Wisconsin's South Shore; heavily wooded, laced with trout streams, countless lakes, and an abundance of fish and game similar to Minnesota. In most any region of our state, a great many quality choices.

Farther east, however, in the northern reaches of Illinois and Indiana, the faces of commerce and industry are much more the rule than the exception. This is true not just near a metropolis like Chicago, but far out in the hinterlands, where you're just as likely to find an automobile assembly plant as a farm, or a duck slough.

Minnesotans who associate "wild" and "scenic" with Lake Superior would be shocked to see the parts of the Lake Michigan shoreline along the Illinois-Indiana border. Particularly in the vicinity of steel towns like Hammond and Gary, Indiana, the contrast is stark. One can walk the sandy beaches of Indiana Dunes State Park, and look out over foam-crested blue waves to a western horizon marked by smokestacks and rusting steel silhouettes of all sizes and shapes, the trademark of a steel industry that certainly created many jobs, but also a visual blight on an otherwise scenic Great Lakes coastline.

One of the things Minnesotans take great pride in is the quality and quantity of our water. We're not without our own incidents of siltation, toxic runoff and invasive species. But, by and large, we live in a place where clean water is thought of almost as a birthright. Impaired waters are not something we expect, but are a reason to get up-in-arms, call out the investigative reporters, and rally at the state Capitol.

Contrast that with many of the streams and waterways we crossed in our travels through northern Illinois and Indiana, where streams looked more like drainage ditches or canals than fishable waters. Tiny bodies of water that in Minnesota would be called "ponds," had jon boats "parked" upsidedown on their banks, the classic "farm pond" that in some areas may be the best fishing opportunity around. Not exactly what someone who grew up in the land of 10,000 lakes thinks of when they plan a fishing trip.

I'll be the first to admit that several trips through these unfamiliar landscapes do not tell the whole story. They are but brief snapshots seen through a car window, and only a limited amount of actual "time on the ground." I know for a fact that Lake Michigan itself can be a great fishery. There are probably some hidden gems of hunting or fishing opportunities, and scenic, secluded places to enjoy other outdoor options.

But for my money, and my all-too-scarce and valuable time outdoors, it's a real blessing to be a Minnesotan, and to be reminded

from time to time that the

Wizard's Dorothy was right: "There's no place like home."

Especially if home is in Minnesota.