Maybe it’s my age and the fact that my kids are starting to fledge, but I often think about the phoebe nest underneath our deck.
The nest was constructed by some enterprising lady bird two years after we built our house in 2005. She and her mate raised their first clutch and then they skipped town, as phoebes do every winter. Phoebes came back to raise families for years to come. They could not have been the same bird, because phoebes only live two or three years. But there’s a chance they were from the same family.
There were a couple years where robins took over the nest. Then a phoebe built a substandard nest a few feet away. The robins moved out, and the phoebes took the old nest back.
This year, the original nest was empty for the first time since it was built. But I saw plenty of phoebes around. Some great-great-great grandbird built a new nest tucked at the edge of the forest that surrounds our house. It would not surprise me if a different bird took over the old nest next spring.,
That’s how it is for birds, and it’s not that different for people. We build houses, live in them, sell them, and move on.
It’s hard to think about leaving the home I’m in. We built it on family land with the goal of staying our whole lives. But we will leave, in one fashion or another. All our stuff will go away and everything will be different, except for the most important fact: people live here.
Change is the most natural thing in the world, and yet it’s the part of life we resist the most.
My latest column is about housing (gift link), specifically the lack of housing inventory and the high prices. Renting isn’t much cheaper, and it’s hard out there for first-time and low- to middle-income homebuyers.
Underneath the market-based numbers rests one big factor: the demographics of our world are changing, and people’s inability to move up, move out, and move on rest at the heart of the matter.
Read more in “State’s housing problems run deeper than market alone,” in the Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Minnesota Star Tribune. His new book about Hibbing Mayor Victor Power and his momentous fight against the world’s largest corporation will be out soon.
