I had a wonderful opportunity to present to an environmentally active group of folks in Stevens Point, WI last week. Here are some excerpts from the talk:
Before I really begin, I would also like to thank the staff of the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education for putting on the Creating Sustainable Community-driven Economics Workshop, Dr. Ikerd for braving the blizzard on his drive up on Tuesday and the Farmshed folks for hosting this event and for their other good works. I would also like to thank Mary Maller who is a longtime friend and has been a generous and gracious host during our stay - and who, I’ve observed, has become a respected community asset here.
As many of you know, I am from this area. My father was a professor of botany for 30 years at UWSP. My mother taught reading at SPASH for 20 years. I lived in Plover for most of my childhood - escaping often to the area in and around the Little Plover River. When I was 16, we moved out to the rolling hills of the area of north of Custer to a beautiful place on 55 acres. There I spent many, many hours exploring public lands, bow hunting, trout fishing, wilderness survival camping in and around the Tomorrow River. In September of 1994, my wife, Karen and I were married barefoot and profoundly idealistic, surrounded by friends and family, sheltered by a circle of White Pines in Jordan Park next to the Plover river. You know when I return here, I find I have a real heart connection to this landscape. I love it and I have very deep roots here. It’s really great to be back.
As I wrote this the other day, it occurred to me that all of my treasured childhood memories center around natural bodies of water. I remember the first act when I got home from being in Peace Corps for two years was to drive to Iverson Park (still by favorite park in the world) and immerse myself in the Plover River. I insisted on that before I even went home to my parents house.
I just want to tell you that this good water that you have, that these good bodies of water do not exist in most parts of the country and most parts of the world. Where I live - in McDonough County, there is not a single body of water that is safe to get into. Your lakes, your rivers, your streams, your brooks, your wells are precious resources that you must acknowledge and you must protect. And I tell you this because, if you grew up here as I did, you just might take them for granted.
But, growing up, I had a special connection to another place as well. Both of my parents grew up in a small college town called Macomb, Illinois and as children we spent at least a couple weeks there every year visiting my grandparents. My favorite place to go was the 700-acre farm of my grandparents’ Curtis - half of it “good” farmland and pasture and half of it oak woodland. It too is beautiful country and it was on a visit there when I was 23, on a walk in that oak woods, that I realized I wanted to live there. That is where we are today - though the story is a good deal more complicated than that...........
Folks, I want to close this part of the presentation by telling you that I am simply astounded by the number and quality of resources in your community. When you combine the local food movement, the deep rooted history in conservation and natural history, the renewable energy resources, the green entrepreneurs and combine it with your natural resource assets: all of the public land, this special transition band that you are in between the temperate and boreal forest, the rocks , and the hills and all of the interesting features that protect you from industrial scaled agribusiness- and, of course, beautiful water everywhere - the big and little Plover rivers, the Wisconsin, the trout streams and many times more natural lakes in this county, than in my entire adopted state of Illinois. I'm here to tell you that there is real potential to do big and important things here. We need you to synchronize your efforts and work collectively to lead the rest of the country.
Before I really begin, I would also like to thank the staff of the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education for putting on the Creating Sustainable Community-driven Economics Workshop, Dr. Ikerd for braving the blizzard on his drive up on Tuesday and the Farmshed folks for hosting this event and for their other good works. I would also like to thank Mary Maller who is a longtime friend and has been a generous and gracious host during our stay - and who, I’ve observed, has become a respected community asset here.
As many of you know, I am from this area. My father was a professor of botany for 30 years at UWSP. My mother taught reading at SPASH for 20 years. I lived in Plover for most of my childhood - escaping often to the area in and around the Little Plover River. When I was 16, we moved out to the rolling hills of the area of north of Custer to a beautiful place on 55 acres. There I spent many, many hours exploring public lands, bow hunting, trout fishing, wilderness survival camping in and around the Tomorrow River. In September of 1994, my wife, Karen and I were married barefoot and profoundly idealistic, surrounded by friends and family, sheltered by a circle of White Pines in Jordan Park next to the Plover river. You know when I return here, I find I have a real heart connection to this landscape. I love it and I have very deep roots here. It’s really great to be back.
As I wrote this the other day, it occurred to me that all of my treasured childhood memories center around natural bodies of water. I remember the first act when I got home from being in Peace Corps for two years was to drive to Iverson Park (still by favorite park in the world) and immerse myself in the Plover River. I insisted on that before I even went home to my parents house.
I just want to tell you that this good water that you have, that these good bodies of water do not exist in most parts of the country and most parts of the world. Where I live - in McDonough County, there is not a single body of water that is safe to get into. Your lakes, your rivers, your streams, your brooks, your wells are precious resources that you must acknowledge and you must protect. And I tell you this because, if you grew up here as I did, you just might take them for granted.
But, growing up, I had a special connection to another place as well. Both of my parents grew up in a small college town called Macomb, Illinois and as children we spent at least a couple weeks there every year visiting my grandparents. My favorite place to go was the 700-acre farm of my grandparents’ Curtis - half of it “good” farmland and pasture and half of it oak woodland. It too is beautiful country and it was on a visit there when I was 23, on a walk in that oak woods, that I realized I wanted to live there. That is where we are today - though the story is a good deal more complicated than that...........
Folks, I want to close this part of the presentation by telling you that I am simply astounded by the number and quality of resources in your community. When you combine the local food movement, the deep rooted history in conservation and natural history, the renewable energy resources, the green entrepreneurs and combine it with your natural resource assets: all of the public land, this special transition band that you are in between the temperate and boreal forest, the rocks , and the hills and all of the interesting features that protect you from industrial scaled agribusiness- and, of course, beautiful water everywhere - the big and little Plover rivers, the Wisconsin, the trout streams and many times more natural lakes in this county, than in my entire adopted state of Illinois. I'm here to tell you that there is real potential to do big and important things here. We need you to synchronize your efforts and work collectively to lead the rest of the country.
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