Shelly Olson stayed close to home, but most of the people she grew up with did not. She graduated from Askov High School with 30 classmates. She says about one-third of them ended up a few miles from home, like she did. The others went farther away. Some are in Minneapolis. One is in New York City.
Shelly Olson has three brothers. Two of them are physicians, and they moved hours away from home. One lives in Minneapolis, one lives in La Crosse, Wis. Her youngest brother, Erik, is still in school at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He hasn't decided where he will live.

	Erik Ecklund is the youngest of the Ecklund family of Askov, Minn. While his older sister, Shelly Olson, is perfectly happy to live in tiny Moose Lake for the rest of her life, Erik has not yet decided where he will live when he graduates from college. (MPR Photo/Chris Julin)

Erik Ecklund is studying to be an elementary school teacher, like his sister. He's in his third year at UMD. It took him a while to adjust to Duluth, after growing up on a dairy farm.

"Parking in the street all the time and actually having to lock your door, and stuff like that," he says.

Duluth has grown on him, though, and he might want to stay here. He's sure he wants to live in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Maybe he'll even move back home to Askov, or to nearby Moose Lake, if there's a job. Maybe. One place he's ruled out - the Twin Cities. He spent last summer there with his brother.

"It's way different," he says. "I know I don't want to go to a big city, but I could teach in a St. Cloud or a Duluth, something that's not too big. Even a small town. I could do that. That would be fine."

As long as it's a couple hours' drive from the Twin Cities.

"Once you get farther up north, you start to get a long ways away," he says. "Just to run down to the Cities for a day trip gets to be a big deal. I don't think I'd like being out there where it's just your little small town, where it's so desolate and unpopulated. That wouldn't be me. I'm a small town guy, but I want to stay connected - if I want to run down to the Cities and catch a Vikings game, Twins game, Timberwolves game, stuff like that."