The Brighter Pathway

February 26, 2025

My mind and heart have relocated to a place three hundred miles north of here since I learned that Northland College is set to close at the end of May. A year of drastic cuts has failed to address the long history of mismanagement that helped bring about these cuts in the first place. Coupled with the return of true winter (last week, anyway), the news has left me not all there as I move through the world.

It’s not a new sensation to anyone who follows politics or who, like me, studies the effects that humans have on our natural resources. As Aldo Leopold himself wrote, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” There is plenty of loss to be felt on all fronts. It’s especially frustrating when others aren’t aware of the loss, or when one person or group feels pressured to solve the problem alone.

I experienced both after I graduated from Northland with a degree in natural resources. Loved ones and strangers alike told me with a straight face that I was going to “save the world.” Not only was this an absurd thought, but it also caused 22-year-old Grace some difficulty as I strived to fulfill the hopes of everyone around me.

While my professors at Northland didn’t shy away from talking about the world’s problems, they also saved us from drowning in despair. My classmates and I learned that we can lay the foundation for a better society by making a small difference in our communities while others do the same. There was still a charge to “save the world”, but it was a collective one. Those four years spent next to Lake Superior taught me to create my own (often unorthodox) solutions and to speak up for myself when, inevitably, an opportunity didn’t just fall into my lap.

Instead of seeing every day through the lens of my failure to save the world, I realized thanks to Northland that every day is a chance to put new steps into practice locally. Of course, contacting or even becoming an elected official is always a good idea. But it’s also true that we can make the places around us better starting right now.

As I sit here in Spring Green in 2025, I am warmed by gratitude for these skills that have translated so readily into my life – and prepared me to face this most recent loss.

“Life is made of highways, built by human hands;

On them, all are toiling, from near and distant lands;

Some build straight and true; others lose their way –

Help us make our roads more fair, as we labor day by day.

Make us builders mighty of everything that’s good;

Make our pathways brighter, as we do things we should;

Help us to be kind to those who need our care;

Father, help us do thy will, and a highway shall be there!”

– Northland College Hymn