A vision for Minnesota to share

The branches of trees are ice-coated, again. The ground is covered in freezing/melting slush. Temperatures have been hovering around 32℉. Has the township plowed our road for the last time this spring? Perhaps. Time, and temperatures, will tell.

March: mixed precipitation

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, yesterday we saw open waters at the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area Sunrise River pools north of County Road 36. There were in attendance quite a few Canada geese, a few swans, and a handful or two of ducks. We noticed a few mallards but that’s the only species we could ID on our quick drive past. A pair of sandhill cranes were stalking across one of the farm fields near the WMA. Other ponds and wetlands we drove past had waterfowl resting on the remaining ice. All in all, a typical early spring day in the North Country.

I’ve been doing some research on the economic impacts of recreational fishing, and fly fishing in particular, over the last few days. According to the American Sportfishing Association 2018 estimates, statewide anglers contributed $4.4 billion in economic output to the state and supported 28,000± jobs. In our own Congressional District 8, the comparable numbers were $518 million and 3,260 jobs. Minnesota, as you probably suspected, is ranked among the top states for recreational fishing participation. For comparison, Minnesota has about 6,500 mining and logging jobs statewide. (I’m not aware of any major pollution sites left by recreational anglers for taxpayers to clean up.)

I’ve not begun to review and assimilate the reports I’ve downloaded in the last day or so. That comes later. I do know that our current economy has most of US like the donkey on the treadmill trying to catch the carrot dangling in front of US. I’ve come to believe we deserve something better. Some years ago, Wendell Berry did a good job of capturing many of the essentials I’m referring to in this poem.

A Vision –

Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,

if we will make our seasons welcome here,

asking not too much of earth or heaven,

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

there, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides, fields and gardens

rich in the windows. The river will run

clear, as we will never know it,

and over it, birdsong like a canopy.

On the levels of the hills will be

green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields.

In their voices they will hear a music

risen out of the ground. They will take

nothing from the ground they will not return,

whatever the grief at parting. Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its possibility.

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