After our recent move to Minnesota, I’ve been contemplating how much the “canvass” on which our life is painted can change, when changing cities (and/or states and/our countries).

You start to sub-consciously expect new feelings on your skin, when you first step outside every morning. You unknowingly become accustomed to certain kinds of vegetation wherever you look. You start to get used to a certain level of moisture in the air, a certain particular color in the sky above.

You go out and about, living life like you do, and the things you see in your peripheral vision are different. The types of stores, cars, street signs — yes of course. But even (and especially) the types of natural scenery that are un-self-consciously existing where you are, as if there were nowhere else they could be in the world — almost as if all of the world could easily be home to them, since the whole world is contained within them as it is.

I grabbed the photo above while out running errands, just a few weeks after we had arrived. I was driving home after a standard Trader Joe’s run, backseat full of bags of peanut-butter-filled pretzel pillows, fresh flowers, bananas, and the like.

And there it was.

If I would have been too caught up in my “life,” as we humans most often define them —  to-do list(s), counter-arguments to something on which my husband and I had been disagreeing, or worries, perhaps — I would have totally missed it.

But there it was.

I didn’t miss it, and I was moved to consider: where else but the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” do you just encounter a scene like this while out running errands?

This is definitely one of the perks of having a Minnesota canvas for our lives.

What is your canvas? And how does it affect you, as you live?