Social Fabric

May 30, 2025

The last graduating class of Northland College walked the stage this past weekend.

I have written about how my time at Northland taught me to take an active role in my community and to leave it better than I found it. There is a direct line leading from my professors’ exhortations of “show up” to the texture and color of my current life in Spring Green.

Spring Green boasts a large number of nonprofits for its size (an attribute it shares with the city of Ashland, home to Northland). Small groups gather in public meeting spaces, lit by fluorescent bulbs as they engage in passionate debates about how best to carry out their mission. The agendas, the reports, the search through old emails for a certain correspondence, the moments of tension and (sometimes) resolution: these are the stitches that hold this community together through the years.

I feel at home in such an environment. My fellow-citizens are sometimes surprised to learn that I’ve only lived here for four years, based on my involvement in local groups and the connections I’ve forged with many of my neighbors. But I couldn’t exist in a place like Spring Green without being involved; the two concepts are the same to me. It’s how I navigate a new place while fighting loneliness.

Outsiders may say there’s no obvious “reason” to get involved in a citizen group. It doesn’t add to our personal wealth or even grow our town’s population by a measurable amount. However, there are needs in this community that would never have been filled if individuals hadn’t shown up in some capacity.

What’s more, we are filling our own needs by choosing to be with others. Instead of shutting ourselves away in our homes, we can find common ground with those who also choose to make a home here and work for the good of all. Involvement both holds back darkness and increases light – even if it is the fluorescent kind.

The Plot Thickens

May 12, 2025

I finally broke through my recent bout with uncertainty to find that I had a lot of very certain work to do in my garden. It’s mid-May, and I’m still working to prepare the plot so I can plant my future charges.

Luckily, the folks at the community garden couldn’t make it any easier. I know enough about gardening to be dangerous, but the organization provides tools, seeds, shared labor, and knowledge to help everyone get more enjoyment out of their summer. I passed a lovely hour this week “shopping” in the seed library. Just handling the many packets with their colorful photos renewed my sense of purpose and hope.

I also installed a small sign dubbing my plot “The No Work Garden.” This will be appropriate whether I don’t work enough on my garden, it doesn’t work, or it’s so successful that it requires no work.

Growing new life in the garden will be a welcome complement to the invasive species removal work I’ve done lately. It seems that these are the two modes of my life: getting rid of the negative and nurturing the positive. I owe this revelation to my time spent in silence on the land.

If I fail in the garden endeavor, it will be because I didn’t take advantage of all the support available. And yet, working alone will deepen my connection to this patch of ground. More time spent struggling in the garden might result in more inspiration for my writing. The choice is up to me.

The community garden volunteers give their time and talent so my neighbors and I can provide ourselves with fresh food and fresh ideas. What better way to approach this time of uncertainty?

Outcome Unknown

April 27, 2025

I have a confession that will shock no one: uncertainty is very, very difficult for me. Even as several positive transformations have been taking place in my life, I feel concern about the unknowns and the things that are left to do. I could have 98 percent of my day planned but spend it all worrying about that last two percent.

On the other hand, I regularly engage in spontaneous walks and drives this time of year if the weather and timing feel right. (My use of the phrase “engage in” proves that spontaneity is not my strong suit.) I go through self-conscious phases when I feel sure that I’m always late, I’m not put together, and I don’t have a clue. And yet, there are gifts for my loved ones that are meant for Christmas 2025 sitting in my apartment as I write this. Do I fall into both camps, or neither?

I can handle the day-to-day planning or the lack thereof. What bothers me (and has caused no shortage of teeth-grinding) is the question of how my life will look one, two, five, or fifty years from now. The recent political upheaval has underscored this question. Even if things turn out okay, will I even recognize the world by then?

I’m trying to take action to stem the tide of anxiety. I have a space at the community garden where I can attempt to grow my own food. I’ve joined groups of like-minded people who provide a safe local space for venting or just shaking one’s head at the state of things. I drink coffee, which makes everything better. And as a fellow member of a leadership program said to my cohort recently, no matter how hard things get I can still count on “a warm bed and a roof over my head.” This will be my mantra as I settle into a new chapter.  

Human, Kind

April 5, 2025

I have often found myself acting as an ambassador for the places I live, work, or frequent. Even before I moved to this tourist town — where we spend the summer eating lunch and drinking coffee with thousands of our closest friends — I had a number of jobs that put me in this position. I have been the first face people saw, the first voice they heard, or the first email they received upon their arrival to the Driftless.

At my current job, I’m also the first person my coworkers see when they arrive at work every morning. I enjoy this duty, although it can be a lot of pressure to set the tone for the day ahead. It makes me proud to see my colleagues visibly relax as they enter our space. Just by taking a moment to smile and say hello, I can make those around me feel safe, comfortable, and cared for.

This role took on even more significance in the aftermath of last fall’s election. Emotions are still running high from that dark day. It was hard for me on November 6th not to feel guilty about my smiling greetings to coworkers. I wanted to suppress my tendency to provide a ray of hope; after all, who was I to say that people shouldn’t be grief-stricken?

I’ve had my share of grief in life, though, which might make me uniquely suited to face this situation. I know it’s possible to be sad about the big things and happy about the little things all at once. Neither takes away from the other.

A smile can have the same effect as exercise, a good cry, or a sunny day. There are times when this is all I need to feel better. It doesn’t mean I’m not grieving a loss, but rather that I’m taking every chance to pause and breathe and try to reset. Many of my journal entries reflect a 180-degree change in my surface mood after I take a walk or the clouds disappear.

We can create pinpricks of light in the darkness for one another. It takes so little effort to consider the people around us, but it can make a measurable difference to someone’s day. As a college professor of mine once said, we should eschew “random acts of kindness” and instead choose to be kind deliberately. If someone is still sad after I smile and say hello, so be it. I would rather say that I tried.

Screen Time

March 26, 2025

I have spent a great deal of time in this still-new year reflecting on my use of technology. While I’m choosing to rely less on electronics in my life outside of work, news from the wider world shows technology playing a bigger role than ever in human existence.

A friend recently gave me a gentle reminder that I was using “too many screens” when she saw me simultaneously consulting my phone and scrolling on the computer. (It was for work, but I agree with the sentiment.) This happened around my birthday, and it caused me to think about how much the landscape of technology has changed in my lifetime. When I started school, the concept of a “screen” was narrower and didn’t seem all that dangerous.

One of my earliest memories is of riding in the car with my parents to drop off our clunky VCR at the repair shop. To young Grace, technology was the videos I checked out from the library and the little drawings Dad would fax to our house when he got bored at work. I also listened to stories on cassette tape every night before bed. We only owned a handful of tapes, so I soon memorized them. It made me happy to be so familiar with the stories that their narrators were like old friends. I couldn’t imagine a world where someone could carry most of the stories ever told in the palm of their hand.

Computers came into my life early on. I was adept at figuring out how to play games in every new format – from floppy disks to websites. As an only child, I also used our computer as a source of inspiration and creative identity. I could take my art and writing ideas and turn them into finished products (which, at the time, I still printed out).

I remember my parents presenting the computer as something I would be learning in school and something I’d need to know how to use as I got older. This could be a whole essay in itself, but I will never understand the negative comments that are leveraged against young people who use technology. My peers and I didn’t choose to grow up in an era when computers were being aggressively marketed to schools and families.

My parents’ lives were tied to technology trends in other ways. Shortly after they’d started dating, my dad had opened his own printing business and my mom had begun selling stationery. Later, financial need dictated that they both get other jobs. I will never forget the sight of Dad’s beloved printing press getting hauled away. Perhaps appropriately, this was right around when the digital era took off.

In 2005, we got our first digital camera and began recording our family’s life in great detail. A few years later, my friends were begging me to make an account on Facebook so I could join them in the online world. Screens started appearing on the dashboards of cars. Classmates started to show up to school with iPods. And when the first smartphones hit, I clearly remember thinking of them as music players that could also make calls.

Speaking of music, we all went through multiple transitions to new audio and video technologies. Each time, it felt like we’d somehow been duped into buying so much of the previous format. Only Dad’s favorite Christmas albums have withstood the test of time, having been migrated from vinyl to cassette to CD to digital files that still live on my laptop today.

All this to say: the pace of change seems to be getting faster, and there does seem to be such a thing as “too many screens.” I don’t believe society is doomed if we accept a new technology. But neither do I believe that technology will save the world like its promoters want us to think. Being new and being good are two completely different realms.

I will always seek out music, stories, and connections with loved ones in my life. I will always be interested in documenting such a life in words and images. I’m grateful that I have numerous opportunities to do it all. As my own story unfolds, it hasn’t made much of a difference what technology is in my hand (or on my desk) along the way.

Going Out

March 8, 2025

(Happy almost-birthday to this blog, upon which I embarked on March 21, 2020!)

My latest meeting with a friend over coffee touched on a favorite topic of mine: the events that mark the change of seasons in a small town. I was pleased when, like me, this friend lumped both human and nonhuman phenomena into one category. From the mourning doves building a nest by his house to the arrival of the brochure for a certain outdoor theatre company, he was seeing signs of spring everywhere.

It feels like we’re poised right on the edge of spring – that time of year when you need to change clothes halfway through each day. The lush growth of April and May gets plenty of attention, but this phase of anticipation is easy to overlook. I, for one, can say it’s changing things for the better.

I make no secret of my dislike for winter. I don’t participate in winter sports, and I’m even less likely to take car trips when there might be snow to deal with. I also get cold far too easily. Thus, while a “staycation” might be a fun option during the warmer months, in the winter it’s a self-imposed constraint. I believe that my particular brand of seasonal depression is caused by limited contact with the outdoors, rather than the cold or the lack of light. And yet, this morning I relished a walk through the frosty landscape because I knew it would be my last chance for a while.

As confirmation of my cabin fever, I noticed yesterday that I’ve only driven about 650 miles since mid-January. This would have been unheard of when I was working for conservation groups and had to travel to countless meetings, events, and rural natural areas. It signals a change in my lifestyle as well as the normal course of a Wisconsin winter.

This lack of distraction does allow for more inner examination. I’m grateful for the breakthroughs, some of them profound, that I’ve experienced in the past few months. But I’m also looking forward to being distracted again (and drinking iced coffee at those friend gatherings). The signs are pointing to a new season with new opportunities for growth.

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

Gathering Strength

February 12, 2025

I haven’t checked my social media feeds in a few days – a rare accomplishment for someone who grew up while this technology was taking off. It’s not the platform itself that bothers me; it’s the intrusion of the fraught news cycle into every moment of my life. Even a quick glance can be overwhelming nowadays.

So far, I’ve managed to stay just as informed through other methods (although I literally don’t know what I’m missing). One of these is good old-fashioned word of mouth, often between sips of coffee. I’ve been more caffeinated than ever in the new year thanks to various groups of friends who meet at local coffee shops. They fulfill my related needs for news, company, warm beverages, and routine.

On my way to such a meeting at the end of last year, I ran into one of the owners of Nina’s Department and Variety Store. It was a Saturday morning, and Joel was about to open the store for business. I asked if I could watch as he expanded the store’s awning, a daily ritual I’d only ever seen from afar.

Joel produced a long metal crank to reach the mechanism from below. As he unwound the spooled canvas, he told me that he likes thinking about his father and grandfather using the same specialized tool for the same purpose. (Indeed, this beloved family business is closing after 108 years of service to the people of Spring Green.)

He showed me how the repetitive cranking motion had almost worn through the metal at one end of the tool. It looked as if a metal-melting superhero had happened by. The reality was much more profound, though: the power of a routine repeated six days a week, down through the decades of a turbulent century.

It is my hope to work more routines into my daily life – to wear my own grooves. Whenever I have maintained healthy habits, I’ve approached each day with a clearer head. “Healthy” is the operative word. If they involve the small details of the community in front of me rather than what’s on the screen, I expect I’ll be more clear-eyed as well.

Wintermezzo

January 28, 2025

I received an unintended compliment at the gas station a few weeks ago when a friend told me, “I didn’t know you had a car!”. It’s true that I try to make most trips on foot in this town where most of the amenities are on the same few blocks. It was refreshing to know that my efforts have been noticed, to the point of my car going unnoticed.

I felt called to go on a genuine walk during the day-long preview of spring we had that same week. My heart was glad for the combination of sunshine, a warm southerly breeze, exercise, and a new vantage onto my town after days spent inside. For one magical hour, I felt that winter was just a temporary state: a disguise hiding the warm weather that is the true condition of this place.

There’s some ecological basis to this idea. Just ask the plants that throw all of their energy into growing and reproducing in summer and then shrink back when it turns cold. The economic engine of our town, for better or worse, runs in a similar way. Both are driven by the sunlight.

We devote money, time, and space to maintaining and enjoying our natural surroundings during the months when we can most easily enjoy them. Our extensive patios and lawns are reminders that no matter how long and dark the winter gets, summer is always on the way.

I realized on my walk that the hardest part of winter, or at least the hardest for me, is over. Those weeks in late November and early December of hunkering down, of stocking up on food for the first snowstorms and worrying about the icy windshields, dangerous roads, and high heating bills that lie ahead – managing all of this anxiety every year is difficult. Waiting it out tends to be easier now that I’ve developed ways to cope with being stuck inside.

Pending the groundhog’s verdict, I still may not be able to walk without a winter coat for six more weeks. But I can be warmed by another compliment I received recently: that it seems like I’ve lived here in Spring Green much longer than I have. All those walks back and forth have ingrained me into this community, weaving the seasons together and reminding me that warmer days are always ahead.

P.S. Thanks to Dad for the term “wintermezzo.”

Minor Miracle

January 12, 2025

Last month, as Spring Green prepared to be swept up in the annual holiday whirlwind, I witnessed a miracle. I found myself in a warm room full of people one Friday night, with more of my fellow-citizens coming in all the time. And everyone who walked through the door was smiling.

This event took place not on another planet but less than a block from where I now sit. Darkness was still falling early with a vengeance before the winter solstice. Our world was the same then as it is now; none of us could claim blissful ignorance of the political mess to come. The folks I saw were genuinely happy in spite of it all. Even in the face of the uncertainty that has dogged our small tourist town since the pandemic, we still know how to have a good time.

My social and spiritual cups were overflowing. I drank it all in and then went home to sleep like a rock.

2024 brought a series of reminders that the people around me can be a great source of hope. On the night before this event, and for two nights after, I appeared onstage in a local production of It’s A Wonderful Life. My cast-mates and I were immersed in the tale of a community coming together to save a lost soul. The play wouldn’t have been far from my mind when I gazed out at this room full of smiles. Both experiences suggest that if we treat people well and welcome them in, they’ll find a way to return the favor.

I experienced my own George Bailey moment last summer, as I tried to leave a precarious housing situation. I was looking to move back “to town” in an area notorious for its housing shortage. After asking my community for help, I received dozens of suggestions and postings from all quarters. It’s doubtful that I would have found a place to go without their aid. I would still just be looking, still feeling trapped.

We can’t all afford to contribute money to our loved ones. Instead, we can offer help in other ways. Maybe we are called to help fill the room with smiles—to show up, no matter how dark it gets outside. We can cooperate to build a place where we don’t let the darkness in, and where we all occasionally burst out in song.