The Twin Cities is an urban forest.

Don't believe it? Just look at it from the air as you fly in. Your first impression is this is a forest not a major metropolitan area.

Saint Paul has 500,000+ trees and Minneapolis has 600,000+ trees, and most of the residential streets are tree lined.

And if that not enough, the Twin Cities is laced through with an extensive network of parks and parkways. First among them is the Mississippi River Parkway — the longest of any metro area on the Mississippi.

And speaking of rocks, the Mississippi River Gorge cuts through the limestone and sandstone underlying much of the Twin Cities and in places has buffs over 200 feet tall.

There are a couple of streams feeding into the gorge; one from each side. The Minneapolis side has a waterfall with a 53 foot drop; the Saint Paul side has a waterfall with a series of smaller drops.

Many of the hills in the Twin Cities are glacial moraines composed of rocky detritus scraped up by an advancing glacier, and deposited here by it as it retreated. Beneath the topsoil is a thick layer of sand and rocks of all sizes — some big enough to give contractors excavating basements major heartburn.

So Baba Yaga has it both ways here; living in her hut deep in the forest, and in the heart of a major metropolitan area.