2007-10-13 Tracks Crossing Snowfield, Minnesota, 2000 Photograph by Richard Olsenius
Snowshoe tracks (left) and footprints diverge in the middle of a wintry central Minnesota field. Wrote Garrison Keillor of this region, on which he modeled his famous fictional Lake Wobegon: "The eastern approach ... is a four-mile [6.4-kilometer] strip of free enterprise in full riot. ... And then the cosmos peters out and you emerge from hell and come into paradise, rural Minnesota."
(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "In Search of Lake Wobegon," December 2000, National Geographic magazine)