June 24, 2025 • 57 mins
Tamara Dean's quest to live lightly on the planet in the midst of the environmental crises of our time led her to a landscape unlike any other: the Driftless area of Wisconsin, a region untouched by glaciers, marked by steep hills and deeply carved valleys, capped with forests and laced with cold, spring-fed streams. There she confronted, in ways large and small, the challenges of meeting basic needs while facing the ravages of climate change. Here, Dean is joined in conversation with Curt Meine.
Tamara Dean is an educator and writer, author of Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless and The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles over Motors. Her essays and stories have been published in The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, and The Progressive.
Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer. Meine is the award-winning author of the first biography of Aldo Leopold and has written and edited many books on conservation, including The Driftless Reader.
REFERENCES:
The Land Remembers / Ben Logan
Order Upon the Land / Hildegard Binder Johnson
Aldo Leopold
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"Dean writes with a clarity and wisdom that illuminates the past, the present, and the future. Shelter and Storm is an essential book for our time."
—Jane Hamilton, award-winning author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World
"In this remarkable collection of essays, Tamara Dean conveys the depth of our connection to the natural world with careful research and gentle words."
—Joan Maloof, author of Teaching the Trees
"There is so much to admire in these beautifully written essays, but foremost are Tamara Dean’s sense of awe in the natural world, her citizen science undertakings, and her deep research into both history and biology."
—Nancy Lord, former Alaska State Writer Laureate and author of Early Warming
Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless by Tamara Dean is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tamara Dean (00:06):
In these times of uncertainty, our accomplishments
are not going to be achieved ina linear fashion.
Curt Meine (00:13):
The Driftless Area is a landscape, because of its
peculiar history and geology,stands out from the rest of the
Midcontinent, really.
Tamara Dean (00:26):
My name is Tamara Dean. I'm a fiction and
nonfiction author, and my latestbook is Shelter and Storm at
Home in the Driftless, publishedby the University of Minnesota
Press. Children's Storm is acollection of 12 essays, each of
which pursues a mystery whileweaving together facts about
nature, history, and science.And the book invites readers to
(00:48):
consider how we tend the earthin times of uncertainty, what we
owe our neighbors, and ways wecan thrive in community. And the
essays take place in theDriftless area of Wisconsin,
which will be a big part of ourconversation on the podcast
today.
I'm thrilled to be joined inconversation by my friend Kurt
Meine.
Curt Meine (01:07):
Well, thank you, Tamara. It's great to be with
you and to have this opportunityto chat about your new book and
to explore the ideas that youbring in through the book. I'm
just delighted. I had a greattime reading it, and I'm really
looking forward to talking withyou. So, yeah, to introduce
myself, my name is Kurt Meine,and I live in the Driftless
Area, actually on the very edgeof the Driftless Area, Northwest
(01:29):
of Madison, Wisconsin.
I'm a conservation biologist,sometime historian, sometime
writer, and full time advocatefor the region we love here. I
guess I should add that I editeda book called The Driftless
Reader. I kinda became a studentof the literature of The
Driftless as much as the land.And so, Tamara, I'm really
(01:49):
delighted to talk with you aboutyour your contribution to that
body of work.
Tamara Dean (01:55):
Thanks, Kurt. Well, I definitely appreciated and
admired your anthology and yourother writing too, in
particular, all your work onAldo Leopold. You've lived in
the Driftless area longer than Ihad, and I'm very curious to
know what you find special aboutthe place and its inhabitants.
What features and wonders havereally struck you since you've
(02:16):
lived there?
Curt Meine (02:18):
Well, as as as you bring forward in your own book,
Tamara, I mean, it'smultilayered. Right? Just the
most visceral is just visuallybecause it's not like the rest
of the Midwest. It's not flat.The Driftless area is rugged.
It's corrugated. It's full oftwisty roads that don't meet at
90 degree angles as they do inmost of the rest of the Midwest.
(02:39):
It's a landscape because of itspeculiar history and geology,
stands out from the rest of theMidcontinent, really. And so
that's kind of the the firstlevel you come at it with
perhaps is just like you'redriving along or walking along
and you say, wow. It's differenthere.
(03:00):
But that superficial reality ofthe the topography of the
landscape has meant forgenerations, centuries,
millennia even, different kindsof human cultural expression and
life on the land. And so onceone gets accustomed to the
place, one begins to pick up thesignals of that history and that
(03:23):
culture and see the quirks ofthis landscape. And it's just
endlessly interesting. There'salways something new around
literally around the corner, andand so it entrances.
Tamara Dean (03:38):
Yes. I mean, I fell in love with it as soon as I
drove through the area, and itseemed so impossible because I
didn't really understand whatdriftless meant at the time even
though I had lived in Madisonfor quite a while, which is sort
of on the edge of the driftlessarea, only some miles away. I
didn't understand what driftlessmeant. And I should say, in case
(04:01):
listeners don't know, thatdriftless refers to the absence
of drift, which is the sediment,the silt, and the pebbles that
glaciers, carry along with themand leave behind when they
recede. And driftless means thatthe glaciers, maybe dozens of
them, never reached this area,which encompasses 8,500 square
(04:23):
miles of Southwestern Wisconsinmainly, but also a little bit of
Northwestern Illinois.
So the topography isn'tflattened like the rest of the
Midwest. It's you know, it hasthese sharp, steep limestone
bluffs and these narrow rivervalleys. And because of that
topography, I mean, as you said,it's been a refuge, for
(04:47):
millennia for the Ho Chunkpeople who were pushed Southwest
from the Green Bay area, what'snow Green Bay, toward the
Driftless area as, you know, theglaciers came down, they founded
a refuge. Then people ever sincehave also founded a refuge, as
have some endangered andthreatened animal and plant
(05:09):
species.
Curt Meine (05:11):
Yeah. People have always recognized that there's
something different about thislandscape, this kind of divot in
the edge of the continentalglacier. Even going back into
prehistory, of course, one ofthe things I have wrestled with
a lot, it does provide refuge,but there's kind of a paradox to
it. It both encompasses you,embraces you, and a lot of
(05:35):
people talk about how they feeltucked in right into the
Driftless because of the valleyand hill landscape. But there's
also a countervailing urge amongpeople who grow up and live in
the Driftless of sometimes yougotta escape.
You feel confined. And I findthat tension fascinating,
between feeling bothsimultaneously almost confined
(05:57):
and comforted in the hills ofthe Driftless.
Tamara Dean (06:00):
Yeah. That's such a great point. It attracts a lot
of newcomers. And, meanwhile, alot of the people who've grown
up there do move away. But Ialso noticed when I lived in
Southwestern Wisconsin in theBiola and Viroqua area that,
people came back.
A surprising number of peoplewho had left right out of high
(06:21):
school were coming back toestablish either farms or
schools or other smallbusinesses, there was something
that attracted them even afterthey left.
Curt Meine (06:32):
Yeah. That's part of the pattern as well is the,
feeling as one goes throughone's life of being a product of
this landscape, feeling a needto sometimes escape it, and then
feeling that urge to come back.There's a lot of examples of
that. I'm thinking right now ofBen Logan, the writer Ben Logan,
born and raised in theDriftless, wrote his wonderful
(06:53):
book, The Land Remembers, aboutgrowing up in the 1920s and
thirties. Went away, was asoldier during World War II, was
a journalist and publicist witha successful career out east.
And in his late years, hepurchased his family farm back,
returned to the Driftless. Sothere is that narrative too of
(07:14):
he had this dynamism of comingand going and finding something
in this landscape that iscompelling.
Tamara Dean (07:21):
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned Ben Logan. I have been
thinking about him lately too. Iwanna switch to a related topic,
which is what do you wish peopleunderstood better about the
Driftless Area, or whatmisconceptions would you like to
correct?
Curt Meine (07:36):
I'll answer it, but I want you to help me because
you've written about that in inin a subtle way, I think, in in
your new book. And, but I'llgive you my thoughts and see
what you think. Well, it isagain, it's an attractive
landscape visually, and so ittends to draw people who have
who have a sensitivity towardthe the beauty of the landscape,
(07:58):
and yet it can be also a veryharsh, demanding, and
increasingly uncertain landscapeto make a living in and to live
in. And you write about this.You write about particularly the
changes that are coming withclimate change and increased
incidence of flooding that we'veseen continuously over the last
twenty years, especially.
This is not a place for for for,superficial tourism. Let's put
(08:22):
it that way, maybe, orsuperficial visitation. This is
a place that requires acommitment in a sense. Doesn't
mean one is gonna always behere, you know, and your story
bears that out. But if you'regonna respect this place, this
holds true, of course,everywhere, in our relationships
with land.
(08:43):
But in the Driftless, you know,the sensitivity of the landscape
to change, social andenvironmental change, makes it a
demanding place to be. Some ofthe poorest counties and
communities in Wisconsin are inthe Driftless because you can't
have the great big monster farmsthat you see in Iowa or
Illinois, the great big corn andsoybean empire farms, you know,
(09:09):
you can't quite depend on thatif you're a farmer or in
agriculture to provide you witha secure and stable life. And
that's true again everywhere,but in the Driftless, the
landscape doesn't permit thatkind of large scale intensive
agriculture.
Tamara Dean (09:27):
Yeah. That's a great point. So it does foster
smaller and often organic farms,family farms. That makes the
area unique because of thetopography, that large scale
agriculture doesn't work aswell. I think one of the
misconceptions we might have hadwhen we moved out there is that
(09:52):
we could make a living farming.
I thought that that waspossible. I came from farmers as
far back as records go, and Iknew it wouldn't be easy, but I
didn't understand the system ofsubsidies that really favor the
commodity crops like corn andsoybeans, wheat, and cotton,
which, just aren't as wellsuited to that topography. And,
(10:16):
also, I didn't anticipate thefloods. Although, to be fair, I
don't think that even people whohad anticipated the kinds of
floods that started happening.Around the time that we built
our house, 2005 to 02/2007, welived through seven of the worst
(10:36):
floods on record.
Everyone would be worse than theprevious one. And by 2018, that
flood was called by some locals,some old timers, a thousand year
flood. And the Wisconsin was itthe initiative on climate
change? Has said has predictedthat Southwestern Wisconsin will
(10:58):
have heavier and more frequentrain events. So I don't think
that that 2018 record is goingto hold for a long time either.
And that's why we need to comeup with, you know, systems of
local resilience.
Curt Meine (11:14):
Yeah. And we have another interesting feature of
the Driftless Area is that wehave a track record on this.
And, of course, we can go allthe way back and talk about
indigenous forms of agriculture,small scale and diverse and,
resilient. But to skip ahead tothe European experience, Euro
(11:37):
American experience, thesettlers who came to this region
didn't weren't prepared for it.Let's put it that way.
And so particularly as you getcloser to the Mississippi River,
one of the quirks of theDriftless Area is that when
you're in Wisconsin, the closeryou get to the Mississippi
River, the steeper and deeperthe valleys become. And the
(12:00):
thicker the layer of lush soil,the windblown soil from off the
glacier, was deposited, and andso it was highly erodible. And
the history of conserving soiland water in the Driftless is
really a story not onlysignificant here or not only in
The US. It's a globallysignificant story. Why?
(12:24):
Because by the nineteenthirties, the loss of soil due
to poor farming practices, theyweren't ill intentioned. It was
just that a lot of the farmersjust didn't know how the rain
worked. They were used to thegentle rains of Northern Europe.
Right? They weren't accustomedto the these, extreme
precipitation events even backthen, and this is before climate
(12:47):
change gains momentum.
So the the kind of poster childfor this, of course, is the is
the Kickapoo Valley and the andthe Coon Creek Watershed right
adjacent to it. And it was inthat landscape, of course, that
the very first watershed scaleconservation and restoration
project anywhere in the countrywas undertaken in the early
(13:07):
1930s. So we have a history oflearning and adapting and
reforming our our ways and andand, you know, overcoming
tradition in some cases to makea more resilient way of life on
the land.
Tamara Dean (13:25):
Right. And the contour farming that was sort
of, experimented with and provenin the Coon Creek Watershed in
particular has become a standardin the Driftless area. I saw it
all around where we lived, andyet, now some farmers have
reverted or are not adoptingthat. And it makes me think of
(13:46):
Aldo Leopold's warning aboutfarms becoming food factories
and that, you know, farmers willdie of their own too much, he
said, not because the farmswould, not because they're bad
for wildlife, but becausethey're bad for farmers. But he
didn't believe in governmentmandates or subsidies.
(14:08):
He thought that educatingfarmers would lead them to
understand that their farm is awhole life supporting system,
and they would take pride increating that, and affect their
neighbor farmers. And what doyou say to that? What would he
think of the situation aroundagriculture today? And are there
(14:29):
places and ways in which hisoptimistic vision about farmers
treating their land as a wholelife supporting system are are
becoming a reality?
Curt Meine (14:38):
So among my other hats I wear, I'm a a scholar of
Alder Leopold's work. I'vealways just had a kind of a
policy never to answer questionsthat start, what would Aldo
Leopold think about
Tamara Dean (14:48):
Oh. It's kind of it's sort of a
Curt Meine (14:51):
joke, but it's also somewhat serious in that you
never quite knew what he as aninnovative thinker would say.
But I feel very comfortableanswering this question in this
case. Like, that quote youalluded to, it's one of my
favorites too, Tamara. It comesfrom a talk Leopold gave in 1945
about the future of farming andconservation. Yeah.
And he said, incrediblyprescient now to read this, but,
(15:15):
at the end of of World War two,he's looking ahead and realizing
that the wartime industries weregonna spawn a whole new wave of
industrialization on on Americanlandscape. And so he said, yeah.
We have a choice to make betweenthe farm as a food factory or
the farm as a place to live. Andwe can see how that, fork in the
(15:41):
road has played out in most ofthe country. However, in the
driftless, this is again whatmakes it so fascinating here in
the hyperindustrial agriculturalMidwest.
Their driftless has resisted alot of those trends. And it has
attracted innovators andexperimenters and back to the
(16:01):
landers and to try to make adifferent narrative out of our
relationship with land. So oneof the characteristics of our
landscape, and you know this,Tamara, is we have a lot of
really interesting experimentsgoing on with different types of
agricultural systems, with alocal food movement and food
(16:23):
processing systems, withthriving small towns unlike so
much of rural America, noteveryone, but at least examples
in cases of where the local foodeconomy has taken root. So
whether that we're talking aboutOrganic Valley up in Lafarge,
Wisconsin, or my neighbors downthe road at the Savannah
(16:44):
Institute who are working on howto get trees and woody shrubs
back onto the farm landscapethrough agroforestry practices.
Or we can look at all thevariety of bakers and brewers
and fermenters and all those outin the driftless who are
figuring out ways to not followthe the typical path.
(17:09):
And this is really an importantcharacteristic. We have been a
proving ground for innovativefood and agricultural systems
for generations. And partly,that's been driven by these
environmental and social needs,but it's also just pure
creativity and people wanting tomake a go at trying to try and
own something a littledifferent.
Tamara Dean (17:30):
Yeah. That's what we saw around us too in Viroqua.
And we made a few steps, someinroads into different projects,
including establishing WDRT, thecommunity radio station in
Viroqua, and community supportfor that was really strong.
Curt Meine (17:46):
Yeah. I mean, we talk about the food systems, but
of course food systems are justpart of the general cultural
innovation that goes on in ourdriftless towns and landscapes.
And they feed on each other, nopun intended. They contribute to
one another. And so anytime Ihead toward La Crosse and come
into the Kickapoo Valley and Ican start to pick up WDRT, I'm
(18:09):
there.
Tamara Dean (18:09):
Well, it's funny you say that the food systems
come around because OrganicValley was one of our early
sponsors and, really supportedus, getting on the air.
Curt Meine (18:18):
Well, what an improbable story Organic Valley
is. Right? Almost anyone in thecountry can go into their store
now and buy half gallon oforganic valley milk. And, you
know, think of this startingwith seven farmers in the late
1980s and how I don't know if itcould happen in any other
(18:41):
landscape. There's plenty ofother organic dairies, most of
them large ones now.
But where else but the Driftlesscould we have fostered such an
experiment that proved to besuch amazingly successful. And
not only that, but how it helpedshape a shift in the culture of
the Driftless at a time whenfarmers were facing such
(19:03):
terrible crises economically. Itprovided an alternative,
provided a different pathway forsmaller and midsized dairy farms
to, to, again, make a decentliving.
Tamara Dean (19:15):
Exactly. They had a big vision and, utter commitment
to that vision. And part of thatwas supporting small farmers
around them. Mhmm.
Curt Meine (19:24):
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna turn around and ask you a
question, if I may, Tamara,because as I was leafing back
through the book and now youconnect so many dots, within the
12 essays, but, the connectionbetween agriculture and water is
the one I'm kind of thinking ofright now, that you've been so
devoted to caretaking ofWisconsin's water in your
(19:46):
personal life and in yourprofessional commitments as well
and the connection to the foodsystems. And that's something
that is a little hard to explainto people sometimes and
certainly is difficult to todeal with because of the built
in economic barriers andwhatever. But how did your
experience maybe being on theland, help to shape the way you
thought about your yourcommitment to safeguarding our
(20:08):
waters?
Tamara Dean (20:10):
Well, I lived on the West Fork Of The Kickapoo
River, which is a spring fedstream, a cold stream, prized by
trout fishermen from around thenation. You know, there are
fishing guides who think of theWest Fork Of The Kickapoo as
their favorite spot. And Iunderstood that the water had to
(20:31):
be clean for trout fishing. Ididn't understand what the,
threats to the water qualitywere. And I had become a
volunteer water monitor throughValley Stewardship Network,
which is a stewardshiporganization headquartered in
Viroqua and serves landownersfrom around the region, helping
them understand habitatimprovement and ways to create
(20:56):
maybe buffer zones for improvedwater quality.
And that was my firstintroduction to the topic. I
realized that up and down theriver, up river of us and down
river of us, there was asignificant problem with runoff.
And this happens when, you know,a flood happens and manure has
(21:21):
just been sprayed on a field,especially in the spring when
the field is frozen, the manurejust runs off and into the
stream. And when I understoodthis and how freely farmers were
allowed to apply these nutrientsto their fields, I sort of
scratched my head and lookedinto it more. They do have
(21:45):
nutrient management plans andthat's regulated by the state
DNR.
But it also seemed that if therewas an accident, for instance,
one of these runoff events,there wasn't really a
consequence for the farmers. Andwe could tell that when
downstream we checked our waterquality, we would know if the
(22:06):
dissolved oxygen is lower, forinstance. We would know if there
had been a runoff event. So thatgot me started in concern about
water quality. And I joined thethe board of the River Alliance
of Wisconsin, which is astatewide organization whose
mission is to empower people toprotect water, basically, which
(22:29):
made me understand the whole webof water.
I mean, water makes usneighbors. It connects us far
and wide, within a watershed andeven beyond from the rain that
falls to the water that'srunning off a field or down
through the bedrock. So anotherfactor in this consideration of
(22:52):
water quality was the floods.And with the flood came all
kinds of, perils, includingbacteria in the water, not just
from farms but from industryand, municipalities. It's a big
topic.
It's really, like I said,connects us in a web like way
(23:13):
that we don't often think about,particularly if we live in an
urban area where we just turn onthe tap and count on clean
water. But in reality, a lot ofplaces in rural Wisconsin don't
have clean water even from thetap because the wells have been
contaminated. And it's up to theowner to check their well water.
(23:38):
The state really doesn't haveany regulations around that, and
a lot of people don't. Mostpeople do not check or test
their well water, and it it'stoo bad.
Curt Meine (23:48):
As I was listening to your comment there, I was
thinking about and it's comereally comes through in your
essays, how being where you wereand having the stream right
outside your door, I mean, itsensitizes you to the to the
dynamic nature of water. And soit's so immediate. And in fact,
(24:09):
that's your phrase. I think yourphrase is water's dynamic
reality. And so we have theseissues everywhere, you know,
groundwater contamination,surface runoff, etcetera.
But in the driftless, therethere the feedback loops are
immediate. You know? Mhmm. Andso maybe it's in that sense,
again, to use one of your words,it's a bellwether region for for
(24:32):
these trends that are affectingus.
Tamara Dean (24:35):
Right. And we had, put in a rainwater cistern when
we built our house, and it was,sort of an experiment, sort of
an impulse, maybe a bit ofintuition. That rainwater was
filtered a couple of timesthrough a centrifugal filter for
particulates and then through aUV filter as it entered the
(24:56):
house. And we sent our water toa state hygiene lab, for
testing, and they said, we'venever seen water this clean. But
it was kind of accidental.
You know, it was lucky on ourpart to have such clean water.
So we didn't rely on a well, butI found out later that the well
for our neighbors just down theroad, had been contaminated by
(25:18):
E. Coli. And it's true that thatcould have come from, you know,
human waste or a faulty septicsystem, but in that area, it's
more likely it came from runofffrom fields. Yeah.
Curt Meine (25:32):
And it also makes me think about, again, going back
to what we were talking abouthow the Driftless has always
fostered innovation andexperimentation. We've seen in
the last twenty years since yourexperience on the land, but, is
the the rise of watershed groupsled by farmers themselves. And
instead of thinking of us versusthem or, you know, they're
(25:55):
causing the problem, and I'm theone suffering, whatever, it's
it's all all of us recognizingwe live together in watersheds
because water does fundamentallyconnect us. And so farmers have
taken the lead in so many partsof Wisconsin. But, again, in the
driftless, I'm thinking of,well, the Creek Watershed
Council was kind ofreinvigorated and created after
(26:19):
those floods in 2018.
Or over here by Spring Green,the Lowry Creek project that I'm
really familiar with, and howthey have banded together up and
down the course of theirwatershed to to voluntarily, you
know, do the work. And all of usbenefit from it, and then all of
us have also an opportunity andobligation to help support them
(26:42):
as they do that.
Tamara Dean (26:43):
Right. And maybe that's an example of what Aldo
Leopold was talking about.Because in those watershed
groups, like the Coon CreekWatershed Council, which is a
great example, the farmers arecoming together in community and
in conversation to solveproblems together with nobody,
you know, presuming to be theexpert, but they're trying out
(27:06):
methods and sharing informationwith each other. And it seems
like, the best kind of ground upsolution for this problem facing
our water quality.
Curt Meine (27:17):
You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna, again, ask you a
question because as I I wasthinking about, first of all,
your experience of, again, whenyou were in in the Kickapoo and
and experiencing these dramaticflood events. But then later on,
you became involved in the inthe post flood effort to try to
(27:38):
help people come to terms withwhat we are all experiencing in
the Driftless, and that'sthrough the another group that
you helped to initiate with theDriftless Writers Group and the
storytelling process. Could youtalk a little bit about you you
saw it from both sides. You sawit as one experiencing, but then
you saw it as one listening andsort of bearing witness as
(27:59):
others were sharing theirstories. Those are two different
perspectives, and I'm wonderinghow you how you think about
that.
Tamara Dean (28:07):
Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. It's a project
still close to my heart. For the2018 floods, I woke up before
dawn, and I heard this oceanroar. And I thought, oh, no.
I knew it had been raining allnight. I didn't know how bad it
had been, but 13 inches of rainhad fallen on a village north of
(28:28):
us, and a reservoir was drainingbecause a dam had broken. And it
was all heading downstream, andthe sheriff was, you know,
evacuating people right up toour house almost. And so there
was sort of this emergencysense. But we were lucky and the
floodwaters receded by the endof the day.
(28:50):
It had filled the whole quartermile wide floodplain across from
our house tarps and other debriswere hanging in trees after it
did recede. Even so, we weremarooned and couldn't get
anywhere for quite a while. Andonce we could, when the roads
(29:11):
were clear of water and debris,we wanted to do something. So we
went to the nearest village onthe river, which was Viola, and
helped clean. You know, Icarried all kinds of mud covered
canned goods and choir robesfrom the basement of the church,
which doubled as the local foodpantry, carried away sandbags
(29:32):
and other things.
And I ran into friends there,who also had escaped the worst
of the flood but wanted to helpout, and some of them were
friends from the DriftlessWriting Center board. We all
agreed that we wanted to do morethan just carry these soggy
items out to dumpsters. So weconceived a project called
(29:55):
Stories from the Flood, andreally it was based on the
research we knew about fromJames Pennebaker and other
scholars about how storytellinghelps us after a trauma to
recast our experiences and feelmore empowered and, resolve and
heal. So our Stories from theFlood project was imagined as, a
(30:21):
writing project where we wouldinvite survivors of the twenty
eighteen flood to write abouttheir experiences in response to
prompts that we offered. Buthonestly, it immediately became
apparent that not everybodyenjoyed writing as much as we
did.
And, you know, from the firstgathering we held at a local
library, we decided to insteadrecord people telling their
(30:46):
stories. And that's what we did.We collected about, well, over a
100 stories. I'm not sure whatthe final tally was. But I
listened to dozens of storiesfrom people who had survived the
flood.
And I was humbled by their trustin me when they told me about
their tragedies. When, you know,a woman said that she sat in her
(31:09):
car on the highway as the waterrose above her, it came to her
ankles and then to her knees andthen to her waist. And the fire
department, crew had told her tojust stay put, so she did with
the faith that her neighborswould come and save her, and
they did. And then anotherperson told me about lying on
(31:31):
his bed and just waiting for theflood to rise because he knew
that it was so strong it wasjust going to demolish the
buildings on his land. He said,Well, if the house goes, when I
asked him if he didn't thinkabout moving to the Second
Floor, he said, There's no pointgoing up stairs.
And he survived. Luckily, nobodywas killed in that particular
(31:54):
flood. But livestock was lost.Buildings were lost. And I would
say too that I lost a sense ofsafety in the landscape.
I felt a bit of betrayal. Ithought, you know, all these
previous floods, they wererecord breaking, but, they
didn't come as near. This onecame to within 20 feet of my
back door, and the next one, whoknows? So when I was asked to be
(32:18):
interviewed for the Stories fromthe Flood Project, I thought,
Well, I don't really haveanything to contribute because I
didn't suffer like other peopledid. The students who
interviewed me because, we didhave a wonderful group of
students at the University ofWisconsin Madison help us with
(32:38):
the story collecting.
These students brought out, someof that fear and sense of
betrayal that I had now feltabout the landscape since the
flood.
Curt Meine (32:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it goes back to that earlier
exchange we were having about,you know, the Driftless having a
bit of a paradox paradoxicalcharacter in that it is a place
of comfort, and one feels atease, but it also can be ominous
under these changingcircumstances. And that's a kind
of a theme that repeats itselfthrough all of your essays. I'm
(33:09):
thinking about how all thesedifferent themes that you touch
on, whether it's, tornadoes or,again, floods or looking at fire
and the role of fire inrestoring lands, You're kind of
doing a dance here between yourcommitment to the place, but
also learning the harderrealities of the place in the
(33:29):
process.
Tamara Dean (33:30):
Yeah.
Curt Meine (33:31):
Yeah. And so I'm wondering, what was that? What I
was going to get at is, was thatsort of the, as you were putting
the book together or as the bookevolved, maybe, that a conscious
choice, or was it a pattern thatemerged as you were as you were
developing the book?
Tamara Dean (33:47):
I would say it's a pattern that emerged through my
life there, and I captured itbecause I was first a fiction
writer, and I hadn't reallythought about writing essays
about our time in the DriftlessArea until all these wild things
happened. You know, it seemed asif any given day I could walk
(34:09):
outside and some dramaticoccurrence, perfect for an
essay, would, strike me. I I wasglad for the material, but it
was sometimes difficult. Andthen these themes of, really
building shelter or finding homethere and then withstanding
(34:31):
storms, came together in most ofthe essays. You know, I like to
write essays as I would writeshort stories beginning with the
question or the mystery thatbrings the reader along to find
out how it's resolved and alongthe way sort of amplifying
tension and deepening meaning.
(34:53):
And I took those opportunitiesbased on what had happened to
me. Truly, I had more essays andmore material, but, they didn't
seem to come together like theones that are now in the book.
Curt Meine (35:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Tamara, as I was, again,
looking back, through the essaysin preparation for joining you
right now, I was, I waswondering how it did come
together as a collection. Didyou have a couple already in the
in the bag as it were and andthen you tried to fill it out,
or did you just keep writing?
Or was there an overall outlineyou followed, or was it more
(35:27):
organic than that? How did ithow did the book as it as I read
it now come together?
Tamara Dean (35:32):
It was definitely organic. The essays included in
the collection span about twentyyears in the writing of them.
So, I hadn't planned on acollection twenty years ago when
I wrote the first one, but theydid come together, as I said,
along with a few others thataren't included in the
(35:54):
collection. But these seem to,complement each other. And I
arranged them, at least to framethe experience from the very
start of our time on theproperty to the very end when we
left.
In between, they skip around alittle bit and are related more
(36:18):
by theme from essay to essay.But, no, there was no grand plan
at any point.
Curt Meine (36:25):
You know, we can't do a a a discussion about a book
without reading it a bit of it.And I'm not gonna ask you to
read anything. I'm gonna readsomething to you. I'm gonna read
your words back to you. Maybethat maybe it'll provoke
something when you hear yourwords.
This is from your, actually,your chapter called Shelter and
Storm. It gives the title to thebook. And I I was just it's just
(36:49):
a paragraph, that I wanna readto you, and it comes midway
through the essay, and you'reyou're pausing a little bit to
think about the your move to theto the Driftless and and the
contrast with your neighbor inthis case. But I'll just read it
to you and and and I and seewhat you think. The dream of
(37:14):
living on your own termsattracted hundreds of couples to
our area in the nineteenseventies and nineteen eighties.
They built homes, startedalternative schools, established
food co ops, and founded whatwould become the nation's
largest organic farmers'cooperative, Organic Valley.
Susan, a talented weaver wholived up the road, and her
husband were part of thatmigration. They planned to build
(37:38):
a home and have children theywould raise in the peace of the
country. But within days ofstarting construction, she told
me they learned they couldn'twork together, couldn't bear
each other in that context.Before, they hadn't known.
So she did things besidesconstruction, and they stayed
married, unlike many couples whohave tried homesteading. Quote,
(37:59):
obviously, what we thought wecame here to learn was not what
we actually came to learn, shetold me. And I like that
paragraph because it in someways, you're quoting her, but
you're also in in doing so,you're reflecting on your own
experience, and that comesthrough in the whole book of
coming to the place as a latterday back to the lander and
(38:23):
learning lessons that you didn'tanticipate you were gonna come
to learn.
Tamara Dean (38:27):
Absolutely. I love Susan, and I love that quote.
And when she told me, it wasvery early on after we had moved
there. And I thought, That'scurious. She had also told me
that her neighbors knew thingsabout her before she did.
In other words, they would comeup to her at the store and say,
(38:49):
Oh, I see your peas are ready topick. And that struck me, too,
because that was born out in ourexperience as well. Truly, all
the essays in the book arerepresenting an aspect of our
lives when I learned somethingafter setting out to learn
(39:13):
something entirely different.And Susan captured that so well
with her advice to me or hercomment on her own experience,
which felt like advice.
Curt Meine (39:24):
Right. Now the phrase that comes to me in
thinking about that, her quote,your experience and sort of the
pattern you display in the book,it's nonlinear. Like the
Dirtless, it's nonlinear. You'reyou're you're not going you
think you're going onedirection, and you're not sure
(39:44):
you're gonna end up where youthink you're gonna go. And
that's, again, unlike a lot ofthe straight lined 90 degree
angled Midwest is what makes theDriftless so quirky.
Tamara Dean (39:57):
I love that you call that out. That's such a
great observation. And I thinkwhen it's iterated multiple
times, that's the direction Igrew in, which was don't expect
things to be linear. Don'texpect things to happen on your
time schedule. For instance,with the prairie restoration and
(40:17):
the fire, it had its own rhythmsand I didn't understand those.
I had ideas about how it shouldgrow or, you know, how fast or
in what way, and it just wasn'tgoing to happen according to my
plan. That was proven over andover again from, you know,
(40:37):
building the house to dealingwith the floods and the tornado
and building the radio station,and really being part of
community. And I think what itled me to was a greater
appreciation for the wisdom allaround me, you know, and the
need to be open to that andcurious. The wisdom from the
(41:01):
land, from my neighbors, fromthe communities. Where is that
collective wisdom held, and howcan I tap it while honoring it
and perhaps even adding to it?
Curt Meine (41:14):
And, how much we need that right now. Right? How
much in times we find ourselvesin at this moment, uncertainty
is all around us, and thingsthat were taken for granted are
at risk and how a linearresponse to that is not gonna
help us much, that we need thatkind of creative and innovative
way of responding. Again, youdon't wanna read too much into
(41:37):
the into how a landscapedetermines behavior. It's not
deterministic, but how it allowsfor different ways of thinking
and being.
I'm I'm I'm thinking back to abook, a wonderful book done back
in the nineteen fifties orsixties called Order Upon the
Land. It was done by a womannamed Hildegard Binder Johnson,
(41:58):
a professor up in Minnesota. Ihighly recommended it. She
focuses on the Driftless Area.Her whole book is a study of how
land use and land planningdiffers in the Driftless.
And she shows how the regularpattern of land survey crids
laid out in the early to mideighteen hundreds in our region,
(42:22):
up until the eighteen sixties.How that's those square blocks
of land you're so familiar withif you ever fly over the
Midwest, you don't see them inthe Driftless, at least not to
the same degree because itdoesn't fit. And and so here we
have this region that thatalmost demands different ways of
being and thinking, and I thinkthat's what you illustrate so
(42:45):
well. But now I'm curious, youknow, since you did make the
decision that you had to pursuea different path and go away
from the Driftless, not too far,thank goodness, but now you've
revisited it in your head and inyour writing in the book. And
that's gotta be an interestingexperience in itself, kind of
(43:08):
looking from within theDriftless out, but also now a
little bit looking from outsidethe Driftless back in and back
to another part of your life.
Tamara Dean (43:19):
Yes. It was a profound part of my life. It was
such a great learningexperience. And as I said, it
taught me to be more open andcurious, in particular, about
the landscape and community. AndI think in these times, as you
(43:39):
mentioned, we're going through aperiod of uncertainty where the
structures that we understood asfirm don't feel as firm as they
used to, though weather in ispart of that, but also our
communities and governments.
I think that this way ofapproaching life could be a
(44:01):
helpful tool, for others if wecan recognize that our
accomplishments are not going tobe achieved in a linear fashion
and that it's helpful for us tobe open and curious, I I wonder
if that might bring some peoplesolace.
Curt Meine (44:22):
Yeah. And it kinda leads me now to think about I
think my favorite chapter it'shard to choose. Of course, it
always is, but I really, reallyenjoyed the the last chapter on
the slow blues. And, you know,when you read something and you
really like it and you read itquick, you're like, I really
(44:45):
liked it, but then you have tosay, man, I gotta go back and
reread it because I liked it somuch. I read it too quickly.
So I I was it again here andseeing how you play off these
two small critters, how you playoff ticks and the fireflies. And
that how you do that, of course,reveals that pattern again that
(45:08):
there are things to be concernedabout in any landscape and
things to celebrate and itsimultaneously. And, again, how
do we find, you know, the beautyaround us and the wonder? The
that's, again, the theme of thatchapter for me is the wonder you
you in your exploration, in yoursearch for this blue flashing
(45:30):
firefly that takes you to thesedifferent places and these small
adventures, but how that playsoff your your increasing concern
about the the threat of thelandscape in the form of of Lyme
disease. And that just seems sotimely.
Right? We're dealing with boththreat and beauty simultaneously
(45:52):
all the time. Maybe we always doin our lives.
Tamara Dean (45:56):
Well, first, I wanna say thanks for the title,
Kurt, because I remember ustalking over coffee one day, and
I was telling you about myexperiences searching for this
firefly that only existed in theDriftless area. I said it's
called slow blues, and you said,well, there's your title.
Curt Meine (46:15):
Don't remember that, but I'm glad I was present for
the moment.
Tamara Dean (46:19):
But to me, yes, it represents both the threat and
the wonder of nature. Also, theinfluence of climate change is
enhancing the possibility ofthriving for one of those
species and decreasing thepossibility of thriving for
(46:41):
another. So the slow bluefireflies, because of their life
cycle, spending a couple yearsunderground, they're not going
to be able to migrate north fastenough if their current habitat,
niche that they're in, warms toomuch. While the warming is
definitely, benefiting theticks, they're moving in greater
(47:05):
numbers farther north, andthey're really proliferating. I
think occasionally of Robin WallKimmerer's quote, all
flourishing is mutual, I think,I'm not sure that applies to
ticks and other beings.
But, I'm sure you understandthat and could unpack that a
little bit more than I could.
Curt Meine (47:27):
That's a pretty profound challenge. I'm not sure
if I'm up to it this time ofday, but, but it is what we
wrestle with. It is, you know,how do we deal with, sometimes
I'll say it this way when I'mgiving a guest lecture talking
with students is, look. We livein a time of unprecedented rapid
accelerating social andenvironmental change unlike
(47:50):
anything the human race hasever, you know, experienced. And
if you feel anxious and undisoriented, there's a good
reason for it.
And I actually did this justlast week. I was giving a
lecture at the UW La Crosse inthe heart of the Driftless area,
and it was, in fact, for amutual friend of ours, Marco
(48:10):
Higgins, teaching a course onthe Driftless area. And the gist
of that lecture was, you know,what what does the Driftless
area offer the world in thesetimes of rapid and disorienting
change? And we've touched on alot of that already, food
systems and the ability tounderstand how change occurs,
(48:31):
how plants and animals respond.But again, we experience this in
any landscape.
But in the Driftless, we havecertain opportunities and
histories to draw upon that helpus to navigate these uncertain
times. And I think you've reallycaptured that so well in in in
the book. I'm looking forwardto, recommending it to lots of
(48:54):
my friends and, carrying on theconversation into the future.
Tamara Dean (48:58):
Thanks. I appreciate that. Well, I wanted
to ask you about yourinteractions with university
students. You spend a lot moretime with them than I do. And if
they ask you for reasons to hopeor possibilities for action, do
you offer them anythingspecific, or what kind of advice
do you give?
Curt Meine (49:19):
Yeah. Great question, and it's related to
the place we are and the placewe've been talking about. You
know? I never expected I'd spendas a good portion of my adult
life living here in theDriftless area, but that's how
life have has happened. And outof this landscape, I've
certainly drawn a lot that if itdoesn't give me hope, it gives
(49:41):
me perseverance and a sense thatyou can make a difference.
And I think that's the mostimportant thing to share with
our our younger friends,relatives, colleagues, students
is if you're feeling anxious andyou're feeling that the world is
going in a direction you don'tthink is very healthy for any of
us, go do something. And in theDriftless, you're in landscape
(50:05):
at a scale where you can see thedifferences you make, whether
you're doing hands onrestoration work, whether you're
involved in your community,whether you're helping your
neighbors clean up after theflood, and I did the same thing
in that flood of twentyeighteen. This is an area that
you can invest yourself in andnot feeling feel like you're
(50:29):
fighting against the globalforces all the time even though
you are. I tend not to use theword hope, but the determination
to to apply ourselves to makingpositive change. This is a this
is a particularly welcomingplace to do it.
And that's what I told thestudents last week. It doesn't
(50:51):
mean you're gonna like, as withyour in your case, you didn't
end up spending your entire lifein the in the place where you
you invested so much, but youdrew so much from it, and you
gave so much to your communityin doing that. So no matter
where you go, you're carryingthose lessons forward. So, and
(51:11):
action is the antidote todespair.
Tamara Dean (51:14):
Yeah. I love that. I wonder what you're acting on
or writing about pertaining tothe Driftless lately.
Curt Meine (51:21):
Oh gosh. Well, I think a mutual friend of ours,
Kevin Koch, down there inDubuque, just asked me to he
invited me to help him on alittle joint essay project
writing about the bedrock of theDriftless area. So he assigned
me the job of writing aboutsandstone, which I had great fun
doing and trying to relearn allmy layers of geology. And
(51:47):
lately, I think we talked aboutthis when we had a cup of coffee
recently. I've been utterlytaken for some reason with the
phenomena of the the goatprairies of the Driftless, the
dry hillside prairies that yousee so prominently, but also
that we are seeing the changesthat we've talked about
affecting them as well, theserare remnants of prairies that
(52:10):
pop out in the hillsides of theDriftless area on south facing
slopes that colloquially we callgoat Prairies.
I'm fascinated be them becausethey are kind of these islands
of of wildness in the middle ofour more domesticated landscape.
So you just never know whenyou're living in this region,
pops into your head as somethingto write about, and you've
(52:33):
you've shown that yourself, ofcourse.
Tamara Dean (52:35):
Yeah. And I think that's something I've taken from
living in the Driftless areatoo, which is that there, it
seemed obvious and hard to avoidstepping outside and seeing
something wondrous or havingsomething strange happen to me.
But, of course, it happensanywhere if you're staying
alert.
Curt Meine (52:56):
Yeah. Maybe going all the way back to how we
started this conversation whenyou asked me, you know, what
what you find here in thisregion is that it's the
spontaneity of seeing things andand being provoked by them. I'm
literally looking out my windownow, and I'm looking to a bluff
with a lot of red cedars on it,which is a sure sign that it
could be a goat prairie, butit's overgrown. I'm looking to a
(53:17):
hedge of lilacs planted probablya hundred years ago to calm down
the sandy soil here and keep itfrom blowing away. I'm looking
to my neighbor's cornfield,which is sort of on the
floodplain, and he's been havingchallenges keeping that
cornfield going in a productiveand profitable way.
So every place has lessons toteach and interesting stories to
(53:38):
tell.
Tamara Dean (53:39):
Yeah. So true.
Curt Meine (53:42):
As I was reviewing what you wrote, I was struck by
how many of the chapters involveresistance, involve people with
quirks, these kind oficonoclastic people, these
people who are defying norms andtrends. You see this popping up
in your neighbors, in thehistorical figure that you
(54:02):
explore. And and I'm justcurious if you found yourself
maybe becoming more of anonconformist than you
anticipated and, how that servesyou now.
Tamara Dean (54:13):
Wow. It's true there were a lot of characters
surrounding us in the Driftlessregion, and I think maybe the
area attracts them. You know,it's possible to live on very
little in a very unusual way outthere. At least in our township,
there was no zoning for a longtime. So you can make your house
(54:34):
out of tires or bottles orwhatever you wanna try, and that
does attract some iconoclasts.
But your question about how itchanged me, I think I became
just more flexible to all thoseways of life. I mean, I thought
I was a little bitcounterculture or open to
(54:55):
experimentation when I gotthere, but I did have to
confront my conventional viewsand break those down somewhat.
So it might be fair to say thatI became more of an iconoclast
while there.
Curt Meine (55:07):
You're living in Madison now, but I expect you
still make regular I know you dobecause you come to visit me now
and then. But when you make yourvisits back into the Driftless,
are there particular spots or aplace you like to revisit that
kind of refreshes you or bringsyou back and reconnects you?
Tamara Dean (55:25):
I'm still struck by the impossible beauty of the
place. So I enjoy driving thosesmall country roads where I
first fell in love with theplace. But I have to say that
what brings me to the Driftlessarea most strongly, what
attracts me are the peoplebecause I had such a community
(55:48):
there. I still have so manyfriends there, and it's such a
wonderful feeling to go to, youknow, a cafe or the local food
co op and just bump into peopleI haven't seen in years and have
just to pick up theconversations right where we
left off. Again, I'm so gratefulfor your influence.
(56:09):
Over the years, ourconversations over coffee have
really affected me, inparticular, your thoughtful
emphasis on community andconnection between people and
and the landscape. It's reallygiven me a lot of food for
thought. So thank you.
Curt Meine (56:25):
I really have appreciated the chance to talk
writing with you. Let's continuethese conversations. Good luck
with the book. Congratulations.And, I can't wait for the next
set of stories that are gonnacome out of the experience of
going around with the book.
Tamara Dean (56:39):
Thank you, Kurt. Yeah. I'll definitely see you
around the Driftless area soon.I wish you all the best with
your writing too.
Curt Meine (56:47):
Thanks so much. We look forward to seeing you again
soon.
Tamara Dean (56:50):
Take care. Bye. Bye. This has been a University
of Minnesota Press production.The book Shelter and At Home in
the Driftless by Tamara Dean isavailable from University of
Minnesota Press.
Thank you for listening.
In these times of uncertainty, our accomplishments
are not going to be achieved ina linear fashion.
Curt Meine (00:13):
The Driftless Area is a landscape, because of its
peculiar history and geology,stands out from the rest of the
Midcontinent, really.
Tamara Dean (00:26):
My name is Tamara Dean. I'm a fiction and
nonfiction author, and my latestbook is Shelter and Storm at
Home in the Driftless, publishedby the University of Minnesota
Press. Children's Storm is acollection of 12 essays, each of
which pursues a mystery whileweaving together facts about
nature, history, and science.And the book invites readers to
(00:48):
consider how we tend the earthin times of uncertainty, what we
owe our neighbors, and ways wecan thrive in community. And the
essays take place in theDriftless area of Wisconsin,
which will be a big part of ourconversation on the podcast
today.
I'm thrilled to be joined inconversation by my friend Kurt
Meine.
Curt Meine (01:07):
Well, thank you, Tamara. It's great to be with
you and to have this opportunityto chat about your new book and
to explore the ideas that youbring in through the book. I'm
just delighted. I had a greattime reading it, and I'm really
looking forward to talking withyou. So, yeah, to introduce
myself, my name is Kurt Meine,and I live in the Driftless
Area, actually on the very edgeof the Driftless Area, Northwest
(01:29):
of Madison, Wisconsin.
I'm a conservation biologist,sometime historian, sometime
writer, and full time advocatefor the region we love here. I
guess I should add that I editeda book called The Driftless
Reader. I kinda became a studentof the literature of The
Driftless as much as the land.And so, Tamara, I'm really
(01:49):
delighted to talk with you aboutyour your contribution to that
body of work.
Tamara Dean (01:55):
Thanks, Kurt. Well, I definitely appreciated and
admired your anthology and yourother writing too, in
particular, all your work onAldo Leopold. You've lived in
the Driftless area longer than Ihad, and I'm very curious to
know what you find special aboutthe place and its inhabitants.
What features and wonders havereally struck you since you've
(02:16):
lived there?
Curt Meine (02:18):
Well, as as as you bring forward in your own book,
Tamara, I mean, it'smultilayered. Right? Just the
most visceral is just visuallybecause it's not like the rest
of the Midwest. It's not flat.The Driftless area is rugged.
It's corrugated. It's full oftwisty roads that don't meet at
90 degree angles as they do inmost of the rest of the Midwest.
(02:39):
It's a landscape because of itspeculiar history and geology,
stands out from the rest of theMidcontinent, really. And so
that's kind of the the firstlevel you come at it with
perhaps is just like you'redriving along or walking along
and you say, wow. It's differenthere.
(03:00):
But that superficial reality ofthe the topography of the
landscape has meant forgenerations, centuries,
millennia even, different kindsof human cultural expression and
life on the land. And so onceone gets accustomed to the
place, one begins to pick up thesignals of that history and that
(03:23):
culture and see the quirks ofthis landscape. And it's just
endlessly interesting. There'salways something new around
literally around the corner, andand so it entrances.
Tamara Dean (03:38):
Yes. I mean, I fell in love with it as soon as I
drove through the area, and itseemed so impossible because I
didn't really understand whatdriftless meant at the time even
though I had lived in Madisonfor quite a while, which is sort
of on the edge of the driftlessarea, only some miles away. I
didn't understand what driftlessmeant. And I should say, in case
(04:01):
listeners don't know, thatdriftless refers to the absence
of drift, which is the sediment,the silt, and the pebbles that
glaciers, carry along with themand leave behind when they
recede. And driftless means thatthe glaciers, maybe dozens of
them, never reached this area,which encompasses 8,500 square
(04:23):
miles of Southwestern Wisconsinmainly, but also a little bit of
Northwestern Illinois.
So the topography isn'tflattened like the rest of the
Midwest. It's you know, it hasthese sharp, steep limestone
bluffs and these narrow rivervalleys. And because of that
topography, I mean, as you said,it's been a refuge, for
(04:47):
millennia for the Ho Chunkpeople who were pushed Southwest
from the Green Bay area, what'snow Green Bay, toward the
Driftless area as, you know, theglaciers came down, they founded
a refuge. Then people ever sincehave also founded a refuge, as
have some endangered andthreatened animal and plant
(05:09):
species.
Curt Meine (05:11):
Yeah. People have always recognized that there's
something different about thislandscape, this kind of divot in
the edge of the continentalglacier. Even going back into
prehistory, of course, one ofthe things I have wrestled with
a lot, it does provide refuge,but there's kind of a paradox to
it. It both encompasses you,embraces you, and a lot of
(05:35):
people talk about how they feeltucked in right into the
Driftless because of the valleyand hill landscape. But there's
also a countervailing urge amongpeople who grow up and live in
the Driftless of sometimes yougotta escape.
You feel confined. And I findthat tension fascinating,
between feeling bothsimultaneously almost confined
(05:57):
and comforted in the hills ofthe Driftless.
Tamara Dean (06:00):
Yeah. That's such a great point. It attracts a lot
of newcomers. And, meanwhile, alot of the people who've grown
up there do move away. But Ialso noticed when I lived in
Southwestern Wisconsin in theBiola and Viroqua area that,
people came back.
A surprising number of peoplewho had left right out of high
(06:21):
school were coming back toestablish either farms or
schools or other smallbusinesses, there was something
that attracted them even afterthey left.
Curt Meine (06:32):
Yeah. That's part of the pattern as well is the,
feeling as one goes throughone's life of being a product of
this landscape, feeling a needto sometimes escape it, and then
feeling that urge to come back.There's a lot of examples of
that. I'm thinking right now ofBen Logan, the writer Ben Logan,
born and raised in theDriftless, wrote his wonderful
(06:53):
book, The Land Remembers, aboutgrowing up in the 1920s and
thirties. Went away, was asoldier during World War II, was
a journalist and publicist witha successful career out east.
And in his late years, hepurchased his family farm back,
returned to the Driftless. Sothere is that narrative too of
(07:14):
he had this dynamism of comingand going and finding something
in this landscape that iscompelling.
Tamara Dean (07:21):
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned Ben Logan. I have been
thinking about him lately too. Iwanna switch to a related topic,
which is what do you wish peopleunderstood better about the
Driftless Area, or whatmisconceptions would you like to
correct?
Curt Meine (07:36):
I'll answer it, but I want you to help me because
you've written about that in inin a subtle way, I think, in in
your new book. And, but I'llgive you my thoughts and see
what you think. Well, it isagain, it's an attractive
landscape visually, and so ittends to draw people who have
who have a sensitivity towardthe the beauty of the landscape,
(07:58):
and yet it can be also a veryharsh, demanding, and
increasingly uncertain landscapeto make a living in and to live
in. And you write about this.You write about particularly the
changes that are coming withclimate change and increased
incidence of flooding that we'veseen continuously over the last
twenty years, especially.
This is not a place for for for,superficial tourism. Let's put
(08:22):
it that way, maybe, orsuperficial visitation. This is
a place that requires acommitment in a sense. Doesn't
mean one is gonna always behere, you know, and your story
bears that out. But if you'regonna respect this place, this
holds true, of course,everywhere, in our relationships
with land.
(08:43):
But in the Driftless, you know,the sensitivity of the landscape
to change, social andenvironmental change, makes it a
demanding place to be. Some ofthe poorest counties and
communities in Wisconsin are inthe Driftless because you can't
have the great big monster farmsthat you see in Iowa or
Illinois, the great big corn andsoybean empire farms, you know,
(09:09):
you can't quite depend on thatif you're a farmer or in
agriculture to provide you witha secure and stable life. And
that's true again everywhere,but in the Driftless, the
landscape doesn't permit thatkind of large scale intensive
agriculture.
Tamara Dean (09:27):
Yeah. That's a great point. So it does foster
smaller and often organic farms,family farms. That makes the
area unique because of thetopography, that large scale
agriculture doesn't work aswell. I think one of the
misconceptions we might have hadwhen we moved out there is that
(09:52):
we could make a living farming.
I thought that that waspossible. I came from farmers as
far back as records go, and Iknew it wouldn't be easy, but I
didn't understand the system ofsubsidies that really favor the
commodity crops like corn andsoybeans, wheat, and cotton,
which, just aren't as wellsuited to that topography. And,
(10:16):
also, I didn't anticipate thefloods. Although, to be fair, I
don't think that even people whohad anticipated the kinds of
floods that started happening.Around the time that we built
our house, 2005 to 02/2007, welived through seven of the worst
(10:36):
floods on record.
Everyone would be worse than theprevious one. And by 2018, that
flood was called by some locals,some old timers, a thousand year
flood. And the Wisconsin was itthe initiative on climate
change? Has said has predictedthat Southwestern Wisconsin will
(10:58):
have heavier and more frequentrain events. So I don't think
that that 2018 record is goingto hold for a long time either.
And that's why we need to comeup with, you know, systems of
local resilience.
Curt Meine (11:14):
Yeah. And we have another interesting feature of
the Driftless Area is that wehave a track record on this.
And, of course, we can go allthe way back and talk about
indigenous forms of agriculture,small scale and diverse and,
resilient. But to skip ahead tothe European experience, Euro
(11:37):
American experience, thesettlers who came to this region
didn't weren't prepared for it.Let's put it that way.
And so particularly as you getcloser to the Mississippi River,
one of the quirks of theDriftless Area is that when
you're in Wisconsin, the closeryou get to the Mississippi
River, the steeper and deeperthe valleys become. And the
(12:00):
thicker the layer of lush soil,the windblown soil from off the
glacier, was deposited, and andso it was highly erodible. And
the history of conserving soiland water in the Driftless is
really a story not onlysignificant here or not only in
The US. It's a globallysignificant story. Why?
(12:24):
Because by the nineteenthirties, the loss of soil due
to poor farming practices, theyweren't ill intentioned. It was
just that a lot of the farmersjust didn't know how the rain
worked. They were used to thegentle rains of Northern Europe.
Right? They weren't accustomedto the these, extreme
precipitation events even backthen, and this is before climate
(12:47):
change gains momentum.
So the the kind of poster childfor this, of course, is the is
the Kickapoo Valley and the andthe Coon Creek Watershed right
adjacent to it. And it was inthat landscape, of course, that
the very first watershed scaleconservation and restoration
project anywhere in the countrywas undertaken in the early
(13:07):
1930s. So we have a history oflearning and adapting and
reforming our our ways and andand, you know, overcoming
tradition in some cases to makea more resilient way of life on
the land.
Tamara Dean (13:25):
Right. And the contour farming that was sort
of, experimented with and provenin the Coon Creek Watershed in
particular has become a standardin the Driftless area. I saw it
all around where we lived, andyet, now some farmers have
reverted or are not adoptingthat. And it makes me think of
(13:46):
Aldo Leopold's warning aboutfarms becoming food factories
and that, you know, farmers willdie of their own too much, he
said, not because the farmswould, not because they're bad
for wildlife, but becausethey're bad for farmers. But he
didn't believe in governmentmandates or subsidies.
(14:08):
He thought that educatingfarmers would lead them to
understand that their farm is awhole life supporting system,
and they would take pride increating that, and affect their
neighbor farmers. And what doyou say to that? What would he
think of the situation aroundagriculture today? And are there
(14:29):
places and ways in which hisoptimistic vision about farmers
treating their land as a wholelife supporting system are are
becoming a reality?
Curt Meine (14:38):
So among my other hats I wear, I'm a a scholar of
Alder Leopold's work. I'vealways just had a kind of a
policy never to answer questionsthat start, what would Aldo
Leopold think about
Tamara Dean (14:48):
Oh. It's kind of it's sort of a
Curt Meine (14:51):
joke, but it's also somewhat serious in that you
never quite knew what he as aninnovative thinker would say.
But I feel very comfortableanswering this question in this
case. Like, that quote youalluded to, it's one of my
favorites too, Tamara. It comesfrom a talk Leopold gave in 1945
about the future of farming andconservation. Yeah.
And he said, incrediblyprescient now to read this, but,
(15:15):
at the end of of World War two,he's looking ahead and realizing
that the wartime industries weregonna spawn a whole new wave of
industrialization on on Americanlandscape. And so he said, yeah.
We have a choice to make betweenthe farm as a food factory or
the farm as a place to live. Andwe can see how that, fork in the
(15:41):
road has played out in most ofthe country. However, in the
driftless, this is again whatmakes it so fascinating here in
the hyperindustrial agriculturalMidwest.
Their driftless has resisted alot of those trends. And it has
attracted innovators andexperimenters and back to the
(16:01):
landers and to try to make adifferent narrative out of our
relationship with land. So oneof the characteristics of our
landscape, and you know this,Tamara, is we have a lot of
really interesting experimentsgoing on with different types of
agricultural systems, with alocal food movement and food
(16:23):
processing systems, withthriving small towns unlike so
much of rural America, noteveryone, but at least examples
in cases of where the local foodeconomy has taken root. So
whether that we're talking aboutOrganic Valley up in Lafarge,
Wisconsin, or my neighbors downthe road at the Savannah
(16:44):
Institute who are working on howto get trees and woody shrubs
back onto the farm landscapethrough agroforestry practices.
Or we can look at all thevariety of bakers and brewers
and fermenters and all those outin the driftless who are
figuring out ways to not followthe the typical path.
(17:09):
And this is really an importantcharacteristic. We have been a
proving ground for innovativefood and agricultural systems
for generations. And partly,that's been driven by these
environmental and social needs,but it's also just pure
creativity and people wanting tomake a go at trying to try and
own something a littledifferent.
Tamara Dean (17:30):
Yeah. That's what we saw around us too in Viroqua.
And we made a few steps, someinroads into different projects,
including establishing WDRT, thecommunity radio station in
Viroqua, and community supportfor that was really strong.
Curt Meine (17:46):
Yeah. I mean, we talk about the food systems, but
of course food systems are justpart of the general cultural
innovation that goes on in ourdriftless towns and landscapes.
And they feed on each other, nopun intended. They contribute to
one another. And so anytime Ihead toward La Crosse and come
into the Kickapoo Valley and Ican start to pick up WDRT, I'm
(18:09):
there.
Tamara Dean (18:09):
Well, it's funny you say that the food systems
come around because OrganicValley was one of our early
sponsors and, really supportedus, getting on the air.
Curt Meine (18:18):
Well, what an improbable story Organic Valley
is. Right? Almost anyone in thecountry can go into their store
now and buy half gallon oforganic valley milk. And, you
know, think of this startingwith seven farmers in the late
1980s and how I don't know if itcould happen in any other
(18:41):
landscape. There's plenty ofother organic dairies, most of
them large ones now.
But where else but the Driftlesscould we have fostered such an
experiment that proved to besuch amazingly successful. And
not only that, but how it helpedshape a shift in the culture of
the Driftless at a time whenfarmers were facing such
(19:03):
terrible crises economically. Itprovided an alternative,
provided a different pathway forsmaller and midsized dairy farms
to, to, again, make a decentliving.
Tamara Dean (19:15):
Exactly. They had a big vision and, utter commitment
to that vision. And part of thatwas supporting small farmers
around them. Mhmm.
Curt Meine (19:24):
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna turn around and ask you a
question, if I may, Tamara,because as I was leafing back
through the book and now youconnect so many dots, within the
12 essays, but, the connectionbetween agriculture and water is
the one I'm kind of thinking ofright now, that you've been so
devoted to caretaking ofWisconsin's water in your
(19:46):
personal life and in yourprofessional commitments as well
and the connection to the foodsystems. And that's something
that is a little hard to explainto people sometimes and
certainly is difficult to todeal with because of the built
in economic barriers andwhatever. But how did your
experience maybe being on theland, help to shape the way you
thought about your yourcommitment to safeguarding our
(20:08):
waters?
Tamara Dean (20:10):
Well, I lived on the West Fork Of The Kickapoo
River, which is a spring fedstream, a cold stream, prized by
trout fishermen from around thenation. You know, there are
fishing guides who think of theWest Fork Of The Kickapoo as
their favorite spot. And Iunderstood that the water had to
(20:31):
be clean for trout fishing. Ididn't understand what the,
threats to the water qualitywere. And I had become a
volunteer water monitor throughValley Stewardship Network,
which is a stewardshiporganization headquartered in
Viroqua and serves landownersfrom around the region, helping
them understand habitatimprovement and ways to create
(20:56):
maybe buffer zones for improvedwater quality.
And that was my firstintroduction to the topic. I
realized that up and down theriver, up river of us and down
river of us, there was asignificant problem with runoff.
And this happens when, you know,a flood happens and manure has
(21:21):
just been sprayed on a field,especially in the spring when
the field is frozen, the manurejust runs off and into the
stream. And when I understoodthis and how freely farmers were
allowed to apply these nutrientsto their fields, I sort of
scratched my head and lookedinto it more. They do have
(21:45):
nutrient management plans andthat's regulated by the state
DNR.
But it also seemed that if therewas an accident, for instance,
one of these runoff events,there wasn't really a
consequence for the farmers. Andwe could tell that when
downstream we checked our waterquality, we would know if the
(22:06):
dissolved oxygen is lower, forinstance. We would know if there
had been a runoff event. So thatgot me started in concern about
water quality. And I joined thethe board of the River Alliance
of Wisconsin, which is astatewide organization whose
mission is to empower people toprotect water, basically, which
(22:29):
made me understand the whole webof water.
I mean, water makes usneighbors. It connects us far
and wide, within a watershed andeven beyond from the rain that
falls to the water that'srunning off a field or down
through the bedrock. So anotherfactor in this consideration of
(22:52):
water quality was the floods.And with the flood came all
kinds of, perils, includingbacteria in the water, not just
from farms but from industryand, municipalities. It's a big
topic.
It's really, like I said,connects us in a web like way
(23:13):
that we don't often think about,particularly if we live in an
urban area where we just turn onthe tap and count on clean
water. But in reality, a lot ofplaces in rural Wisconsin don't
have clean water even from thetap because the wells have been
contaminated. And it's up to theowner to check their well water.
(23:38):
The state really doesn't haveany regulations around that, and
a lot of people don't. Mostpeople do not check or test
their well water, and it it'stoo bad.
Curt Meine (23:48):
As I was listening to your comment there, I was
thinking about and it's comereally comes through in your
essays, how being where you wereand having the stream right
outside your door, I mean, itsensitizes you to the to the
dynamic nature of water. And soit's so immediate. And in fact,
(24:09):
that's your phrase. I think yourphrase is water's dynamic
reality. And so we have theseissues everywhere, you know,
groundwater contamination,surface runoff, etcetera.
But in the driftless, therethere the feedback loops are
immediate. You know? Mhmm. Andso maybe it's in that sense,
again, to use one of your words,it's a bellwether region for for
(24:32):
these trends that are affectingus.
Tamara Dean (24:35):
Right. And we had, put in a rainwater cistern when
we built our house, and it was,sort of an experiment, sort of
an impulse, maybe a bit ofintuition. That rainwater was
filtered a couple of timesthrough a centrifugal filter for
particulates and then through aUV filter as it entered the
(24:56):
house. And we sent our water toa state hygiene lab, for
testing, and they said, we'venever seen water this clean. But
it was kind of accidental.
You know, it was lucky on ourpart to have such clean water.
So we didn't rely on a well, butI found out later that the well
for our neighbors just down theroad, had been contaminated by
(25:18):
E. Coli. And it's true that thatcould have come from, you know,
human waste or a faulty septicsystem, but in that area, it's
more likely it came from runofffrom fields. Yeah.
Curt Meine (25:32):
And it also makes me think about, again, going back
to what we were talking abouthow the Driftless has always
fostered innovation andexperimentation. We've seen in
the last twenty years since yourexperience on the land, but, is
the the rise of watershed groupsled by farmers themselves. And
instead of thinking of us versusthem or, you know, they're
(25:55):
causing the problem, and I'm theone suffering, whatever, it's
it's all all of us recognizingwe live together in watersheds
because water does fundamentallyconnect us. And so farmers have
taken the lead in so many partsof Wisconsin. But, again, in the
driftless, I'm thinking of,well, the Creek Watershed
Council was kind ofreinvigorated and created after
(26:19):
those floods in 2018.
Or over here by Spring Green,the Lowry Creek project that I'm
really familiar with, and howthey have banded together up and
down the course of theirwatershed to to voluntarily, you
know, do the work. And all of usbenefit from it, and then all of
us have also an opportunity andobligation to help support them
(26:42):
as they do that.
Tamara Dean (26:43):
Right. And maybe that's an example of what Aldo
Leopold was talking about.Because in those watershed
groups, like the Coon CreekWatershed Council, which is a
great example, the farmers arecoming together in community and
in conversation to solveproblems together with nobody,
you know, presuming to be theexpert, but they're trying out
(27:06):
methods and sharing informationwith each other. And it seems
like, the best kind of ground upsolution for this problem facing
our water quality.
Curt Meine (27:17):
You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna, again, ask you a
question because as I I wasthinking about, first of all,
your experience of, again, whenyou were in in the Kickapoo and
and experiencing these dramaticflood events. But then later on,
you became involved in the inthe post flood effort to try to
(27:38):
help people come to terms withwhat we are all experiencing in
the Driftless, and that'sthrough the another group that
you helped to initiate with theDriftless Writers Group and the
storytelling process. Could youtalk a little bit about you you
saw it from both sides. You sawit as one experiencing, but then
you saw it as one listening andsort of bearing witness as
(27:59):
others were sharing theirstories. Those are two different
perspectives, and I'm wonderinghow you how you think about
that.
Tamara Dean (28:07):
Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. It's a project
still close to my heart. For the2018 floods, I woke up before
dawn, and I heard this oceanroar. And I thought, oh, no.
I knew it had been raining allnight. I didn't know how bad it
had been, but 13 inches of rainhad fallen on a village north of
(28:28):
us, and a reservoir was drainingbecause a dam had broken. And it
was all heading downstream, andthe sheriff was, you know,
evacuating people right up toour house almost. And so there
was sort of this emergencysense. But we were lucky and the
floodwaters receded by the endof the day.
(28:50):
It had filled the whole quartermile wide floodplain across from
our house tarps and other debriswere hanging in trees after it
did recede. Even so, we weremarooned and couldn't get
anywhere for quite a while. Andonce we could, when the roads
(29:11):
were clear of water and debris,we wanted to do something. So we
went to the nearest village onthe river, which was Viola, and
helped clean. You know, Icarried all kinds of mud covered
canned goods and choir robesfrom the basement of the church,
which doubled as the local foodpantry, carried away sandbags
(29:32):
and other things.
And I ran into friends there,who also had escaped the worst
of the flood but wanted to helpout, and some of them were
friends from the DriftlessWriting Center board. We all
agreed that we wanted to do morethan just carry these soggy
items out to dumpsters. So weconceived a project called
(29:55):
Stories from the Flood, andreally it was based on the
research we knew about fromJames Pennebaker and other
scholars about how storytellinghelps us after a trauma to
recast our experiences and feelmore empowered and, resolve and
heal. So our Stories from theFlood project was imagined as, a
(30:21):
writing project where we wouldinvite survivors of the twenty
eighteen flood to write abouttheir experiences in response to
prompts that we offered. Buthonestly, it immediately became
apparent that not everybodyenjoyed writing as much as we
did.
And, you know, from the firstgathering we held at a local
library, we decided to insteadrecord people telling their
(30:46):
stories. And that's what we did.We collected about, well, over a
100 stories. I'm not sure whatthe final tally was. But I
listened to dozens of storiesfrom people who had survived the
flood.
And I was humbled by their trustin me when they told me about
their tragedies. When, you know,a woman said that she sat in her
(31:09):
car on the highway as the waterrose above her, it came to her
ankles and then to her knees andthen to her waist. And the fire
department, crew had told her tojust stay put, so she did with
the faith that her neighborswould come and save her, and
they did. And then anotherperson told me about lying on
(31:31):
his bed and just waiting for theflood to rise because he knew
that it was so strong it wasjust going to demolish the
buildings on his land. He said,Well, if the house goes, when I
asked him if he didn't thinkabout moving to the Second
Floor, he said, There's no pointgoing up stairs.
And he survived. Luckily, nobodywas killed in that particular
(31:54):
flood. But livestock was lost.Buildings were lost. And I would
say too that I lost a sense ofsafety in the landscape.
I felt a bit of betrayal. Ithought, you know, all these
previous floods, they wererecord breaking, but, they
didn't come as near. This onecame to within 20 feet of my
back door, and the next one, whoknows? So when I was asked to be
(32:18):
interviewed for the Stories fromthe Flood Project, I thought,
Well, I don't really haveanything to contribute because I
didn't suffer like other peopledid. The students who
interviewed me because, we didhave a wonderful group of
students at the University ofWisconsin Madison help us with
(32:38):
the story collecting.
These students brought out, someof that fear and sense of
betrayal that I had now feltabout the landscape since the
flood.
Curt Meine (32:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it goes back to that earlier
exchange we were having about,you know, the Driftless having a
bit of a paradox paradoxicalcharacter in that it is a place
of comfort, and one feels atease, but it also can be ominous
under these changingcircumstances. And that's a kind
of a theme that repeats itselfthrough all of your essays. I'm
(33:09):
thinking about how all thesedifferent themes that you touch
on, whether it's, tornadoes or,again, floods or looking at fire
and the role of fire inrestoring lands, You're kind of
doing a dance here between yourcommitment to the place, but
also learning the harderrealities of the place in the
(33:29):
process.
Tamara Dean (33:30):
Yeah.
Curt Meine (33:31):
Yeah. And so I'm wondering, what was that? What I
was going to get at is, was thatsort of the, as you were putting
the book together or as the bookevolved, maybe, that a conscious
choice, or was it a pattern thatemerged as you were as you were
developing the book?
Tamara Dean (33:47):
I would say it's a pattern that emerged through my
life there, and I captured itbecause I was first a fiction
writer, and I hadn't reallythought about writing essays
about our time in the DriftlessArea until all these wild things
happened. You know, it seemed asif any given day I could walk
(34:09):
outside and some dramaticoccurrence, perfect for an
essay, would, strike me. I I wasglad for the material, but it
was sometimes difficult. Andthen these themes of, really
building shelter or finding homethere and then withstanding
(34:31):
storms, came together in most ofthe essays. You know, I like to
write essays as I would writeshort stories beginning with the
question or the mystery thatbrings the reader along to find
out how it's resolved and alongthe way sort of amplifying
tension and deepening meaning.
(34:53):
And I took those opportunitiesbased on what had happened to
me. Truly, I had more essays andmore material, but, they didn't
seem to come together like theones that are now in the book.
Curt Meine (35:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Tamara, as I was, again,
looking back, through the essaysin preparation for joining you
right now, I was, I waswondering how it did come
together as a collection. Didyou have a couple already in the
in the bag as it were and andthen you tried to fill it out,
or did you just keep writing?
Or was there an overall outlineyou followed, or was it more
(35:27):
organic than that? How did ithow did the book as it as I read
it now come together?
Tamara Dean (35:32):
It was definitely organic. The essays included in
the collection span about twentyyears in the writing of them.
So, I hadn't planned on acollection twenty years ago when
I wrote the first one, but theydid come together, as I said,
along with a few others thataren't included in the
(35:54):
collection. But these seem to,complement each other. And I
arranged them, at least to framethe experience from the very
start of our time on theproperty to the very end when we
left.
In between, they skip around alittle bit and are related more
(36:18):
by theme from essay to essay.But, no, there was no grand plan
at any point.
Curt Meine (36:25):
You know, we can't do a a a discussion about a book
without reading it a bit of it.And I'm not gonna ask you to
read anything. I'm gonna readsomething to you. I'm gonna read
your words back to you. Maybethat maybe it'll provoke
something when you hear yourwords.
This is from your, actually,your chapter called Shelter and
Storm. It gives the title to thebook. And I I was just it's just
(36:49):
a paragraph, that I wanna readto you, and it comes midway
through the essay, and you'reyou're pausing a little bit to
think about the your move to theto the Driftless and and the
contrast with your neighbor inthis case. But I'll just read it
to you and and and I and seewhat you think. The dream of
(37:14):
living on your own termsattracted hundreds of couples to
our area in the nineteenseventies and nineteen eighties.
They built homes, startedalternative schools, established
food co ops, and founded whatwould become the nation's
largest organic farmers'cooperative, Organic Valley.
Susan, a talented weaver wholived up the road, and her
husband were part of thatmigration. They planned to build
(37:38):
a home and have children theywould raise in the peace of the
country. But within days ofstarting construction, she told
me they learned they couldn'twork together, couldn't bear
each other in that context.Before, they hadn't known.
So she did things besidesconstruction, and they stayed
married, unlike many couples whohave tried homesteading. Quote,
(37:59):
obviously, what we thought wecame here to learn was not what
we actually came to learn, shetold me. And I like that
paragraph because it in someways, you're quoting her, but
you're also in in doing so,you're reflecting on your own
experience, and that comesthrough in the whole book of
coming to the place as a latterday back to the lander and
(38:23):
learning lessons that you didn'tanticipate you were gonna come
to learn.
Tamara Dean (38:27):
Absolutely. I love Susan, and I love that quote.
And when she told me, it wasvery early on after we had moved
there. And I thought, That'scurious. She had also told me
that her neighbors knew thingsabout her before she did.
In other words, they would comeup to her at the store and say,
(38:49):
Oh, I see your peas are ready topick. And that struck me, too,
because that was born out in ourexperience as well. Truly, all
the essays in the book arerepresenting an aspect of our
lives when I learned somethingafter setting out to learn
(39:13):
something entirely different.And Susan captured that so well
with her advice to me or hercomment on her own experience,
which felt like advice.
Curt Meine (39:24):
Right. Now the phrase that comes to me in
thinking about that, her quote,your experience and sort of the
pattern you display in the book,it's nonlinear. Like the
Dirtless, it's nonlinear. You'reyou're you're not going you
think you're going onedirection, and you're not sure
(39:44):
you're gonna end up where youthink you're gonna go. And
that's, again, unlike a lot ofthe straight lined 90 degree
angled Midwest is what makes theDriftless so quirky.
Tamara Dean (39:57):
I love that you call that out. That's such a
great observation. And I thinkwhen it's iterated multiple
times, that's the direction Igrew in, which was don't expect
things to be linear. Don'texpect things to happen on your
time schedule. For instance,with the prairie restoration and
(40:17):
the fire, it had its own rhythmsand I didn't understand those.
I had ideas about how it shouldgrow or, you know, how fast or
in what way, and it just wasn'tgoing to happen according to my
plan. That was proven over andover again from, you know,
(40:37):
building the house to dealingwith the floods and the tornado
and building the radio station,and really being part of
community. And I think what itled me to was a greater
appreciation for the wisdom allaround me, you know, and the
need to be open to that andcurious. The wisdom from the
(41:01):
land, from my neighbors, fromthe communities. Where is that
collective wisdom held, and howcan I tap it while honoring it
and perhaps even adding to it?
Curt Meine (41:14):
And, how much we need that right now. Right? How
much in times we find ourselvesin at this moment, uncertainty
is all around us, and thingsthat were taken for granted are
at risk and how a linearresponse to that is not gonna
help us much, that we need thatkind of creative and innovative
way of responding. Again, youdon't wanna read too much into
(41:37):
the into how a landscapedetermines behavior. It's not
deterministic, but how it allowsfor different ways of thinking
and being.
I'm I'm I'm thinking back to abook, a wonderful book done back
in the nineteen fifties orsixties called Order Upon the
Land. It was done by a womannamed Hildegard Binder Johnson,
(41:58):
a professor up in Minnesota. Ihighly recommended it. She
focuses on the Driftless Area.Her whole book is a study of how
land use and land planningdiffers in the Driftless.
And she shows how the regularpattern of land survey crids
laid out in the early to mideighteen hundreds in our region,
(42:22):
up until the eighteen sixties.How that's those square blocks
of land you're so familiar withif you ever fly over the
Midwest, you don't see them inthe Driftless, at least not to
the same degree because itdoesn't fit. And and so here we
have this region that thatalmost demands different ways of
being and thinking, and I thinkthat's what you illustrate so
(42:45):
well. But now I'm curious, youknow, since you did make the
decision that you had to pursuea different path and go away
from the Driftless, not too far,thank goodness, but now you've
revisited it in your head and inyour writing in the book. And
that's gotta be an interestingexperience in itself, kind of
(43:08):
looking from within theDriftless out, but also now a
little bit looking from outsidethe Driftless back in and back
to another part of your life.
Tamara Dean (43:19):
Yes. It was a profound part of my life. It was
such a great learningexperience. And as I said, it
taught me to be more open andcurious, in particular, about
the landscape and community. AndI think in these times, as you
(43:39):
mentioned, we're going through aperiod of uncertainty where the
structures that we understood asfirm don't feel as firm as they
used to, though weather in ispart of that, but also our
communities and governments.
I think that this way ofapproaching life could be a
(44:01):
helpful tool, for others if wecan recognize that our
accomplishments are not going tobe achieved in a linear fashion
and that it's helpful for us tobe open and curious, I I wonder
if that might bring some peoplesolace.
Curt Meine (44:22):
Yeah. And it kinda leads me now to think about I
think my favorite chapter it'shard to choose. Of course, it
always is, but I really, reallyenjoyed the the last chapter on
the slow blues. And, you know,when you read something and you
really like it and you read itquick, you're like, I really
(44:45):
liked it, but then you have tosay, man, I gotta go back and
reread it because I liked it somuch. I read it too quickly.
So I I was it again here andseeing how you play off these
two small critters, how you playoff ticks and the fireflies. And
that how you do that, of course,reveals that pattern again that
(45:08):
there are things to be concernedabout in any landscape and
things to celebrate and itsimultaneously. And, again, how
do we find, you know, the beautyaround us and the wonder? The
that's, again, the theme of thatchapter for me is the wonder you
you in your exploration, in yoursearch for this blue flashing
(45:30):
firefly that takes you to thesedifferent places and these small
adventures, but how that playsoff your your increasing concern
about the the threat of thelandscape in the form of of Lyme
disease. And that just seems sotimely.
Right? We're dealing with boththreat and beauty simultaneously
(45:52):
all the time. Maybe we always doin our lives.
Tamara Dean (45:56):
Well, first, I wanna say thanks for the title,
Kurt, because I remember ustalking over coffee one day, and
I was telling you about myexperiences searching for this
firefly that only existed in theDriftless area. I said it's
called slow blues, and you said,well, there's your title.
Curt Meine (46:15):
Don't remember that, but I'm glad I was present for
the moment.
Tamara Dean (46:19):
But to me, yes, it represents both the threat and
the wonder of nature. Also, theinfluence of climate change is
enhancing the possibility ofthriving for one of those
species and decreasing thepossibility of thriving for
(46:41):
another. So the slow bluefireflies, because of their life
cycle, spending a couple yearsunderground, they're not going
to be able to migrate north fastenough if their current habitat,
niche that they're in, warms toomuch. While the warming is
definitely, benefiting theticks, they're moving in greater
(47:05):
numbers farther north, andthey're really proliferating. I
think occasionally of Robin WallKimmerer's quote, all
flourishing is mutual, I think,I'm not sure that applies to
ticks and other beings.
But, I'm sure you understandthat and could unpack that a
little bit more than I could.
Curt Meine (47:27):
That's a pretty profound challenge. I'm not sure
if I'm up to it this time ofday, but, but it is what we
wrestle with. It is, you know,how do we deal with, sometimes
I'll say it this way when I'mgiving a guest lecture talking
with students is, look. We livein a time of unprecedented rapid
accelerating social andenvironmental change unlike
(47:50):
anything the human race hasever, you know, experienced. And
if you feel anxious and undisoriented, there's a good
reason for it.
And I actually did this justlast week. I was giving a
lecture at the UW La Crosse inthe heart of the Driftless area,
and it was, in fact, for amutual friend of ours, Marco
(48:10):
Higgins, teaching a course onthe Driftless area. And the gist
of that lecture was, you know,what what does the Driftless
area offer the world in thesetimes of rapid and disorienting
change? And we've touched on alot of that already, food
systems and the ability tounderstand how change occurs,
(48:31):
how plants and animals respond.But again, we experience this in
any landscape.
But in the Driftless, we havecertain opportunities and
histories to draw upon that helpus to navigate these uncertain
times. And I think you've reallycaptured that so well in in in
the book. I'm looking forwardto, recommending it to lots of
(48:54):
my friends and, carrying on theconversation into the future.
Tamara Dean (48:58):
Thanks. I appreciate that. Well, I wanted
to ask you about yourinteractions with university
students. You spend a lot moretime with them than I do. And if
they ask you for reasons to hopeor possibilities for action, do
you offer them anythingspecific, or what kind of advice
do you give?
Curt Meine (49:19):
Yeah. Great question, and it's related to
the place we are and the placewe've been talking about. You
know? I never expected I'd spendas a good portion of my adult
life living here in theDriftless area, but that's how
life have has happened. And outof this landscape, I've
certainly drawn a lot that if itdoesn't give me hope, it gives
(49:41):
me perseverance and a sense thatyou can make a difference.
And I think that's the mostimportant thing to share with
our our younger friends,relatives, colleagues, students
is if you're feeling anxious andyou're feeling that the world is
going in a direction you don'tthink is very healthy for any of
us, go do something. And in theDriftless, you're in landscape
(50:05):
at a scale where you can see thedifferences you make, whether
you're doing hands onrestoration work, whether you're
involved in your community,whether you're helping your
neighbors clean up after theflood, and I did the same thing
in that flood of twentyeighteen. This is an area that
you can invest yourself in andnot feeling feel like you're
(50:29):
fighting against the globalforces all the time even though
you are. I tend not to use theword hope, but the determination
to to apply ourselves to makingpositive change. This is a this
is a particularly welcomingplace to do it.
And that's what I told thestudents last week. It doesn't
(50:51):
mean you're gonna like, as withyour in your case, you didn't
end up spending your entire lifein the in the place where you
you invested so much, but youdrew so much from it, and you
gave so much to your communityin doing that. So no matter
where you go, you're carryingthose lessons forward. So, and
(51:11):
action is the antidote todespair.
Tamara Dean (51:14):
Yeah. I love that. I wonder what you're acting on
or writing about pertaining tothe Driftless lately.
Curt Meine (51:21):
Oh gosh. Well, I think a mutual friend of ours,
Kevin Koch, down there inDubuque, just asked me to he
invited me to help him on alittle joint essay project
writing about the bedrock of theDriftless area. So he assigned
me the job of writing aboutsandstone, which I had great fun
doing and trying to relearn allmy layers of geology. And
(51:47):
lately, I think we talked aboutthis when we had a cup of coffee
recently. I've been utterlytaken for some reason with the
phenomena of the the goatprairies of the Driftless, the
dry hillside prairies that yousee so prominently, but also
that we are seeing the changesthat we've talked about
affecting them as well, theserare remnants of prairies that
(52:10):
pop out in the hillsides of theDriftless area on south facing
slopes that colloquially we callgoat Prairies.
I'm fascinated be them becausethey are kind of these islands
of of wildness in the middle ofour more domesticated landscape.
So you just never know whenyou're living in this region,
pops into your head as somethingto write about, and you've
(52:33):
you've shown that yourself, ofcourse.
Tamara Dean (52:35):
Yeah. And I think that's something I've taken from
living in the Driftless areatoo, which is that there, it
seemed obvious and hard to avoidstepping outside and seeing
something wondrous or havingsomething strange happen to me.
But, of course, it happensanywhere if you're staying
alert.
Curt Meine (52:56):
Yeah. Maybe going all the way back to how we
started this conversation whenyou asked me, you know, what
what you find here in thisregion is that it's the
spontaneity of seeing things andand being provoked by them. I'm
literally looking out my windownow, and I'm looking to a bluff
with a lot of red cedars on it,which is a sure sign that it
could be a goat prairie, butit's overgrown. I'm looking to a
(53:17):
hedge of lilacs planted probablya hundred years ago to calm down
the sandy soil here and keep itfrom blowing away. I'm looking
to my neighbor's cornfield,which is sort of on the
floodplain, and he's been havingchallenges keeping that
cornfield going in a productiveand profitable way.
So every place has lessons toteach and interesting stories to
(53:38):
tell.
Tamara Dean (53:39):
Yeah. So true.
Curt Meine (53:42):
As I was reviewing what you wrote, I was struck by
how many of the chapters involveresistance, involve people with
quirks, these kind oficonoclastic people, these
people who are defying norms andtrends. You see this popping up
in your neighbors, in thehistorical figure that you
(54:02):
explore. And and I'm justcurious if you found yourself
maybe becoming more of anonconformist than you
anticipated and, how that servesyou now.
Tamara Dean (54:13):
Wow. It's true there were a lot of characters
surrounding us in the Driftlessregion, and I think maybe the
area attracts them. You know,it's possible to live on very
little in a very unusual way outthere. At least in our township,
there was no zoning for a longtime. So you can make your house
(54:34):
out of tires or bottles orwhatever you wanna try, and that
does attract some iconoclasts.
But your question about how itchanged me, I think I became
just more flexible to all thoseways of life. I mean, I thought
I was a little bitcounterculture or open to
(54:55):
experimentation when I gotthere, but I did have to
confront my conventional viewsand break those down somewhat.
So it might be fair to say thatI became more of an iconoclast
while there.
Curt Meine (55:07):
You're living in Madison now, but I expect you
still make regular I know you dobecause you come to visit me now
and then. But when you make yourvisits back into the Driftless,
are there particular spots or aplace you like to revisit that
kind of refreshes you or bringsyou back and reconnects you?
Tamara Dean (55:25):
I'm still struck by the impossible beauty of the
place. So I enjoy driving thosesmall country roads where I
first fell in love with theplace. But I have to say that
what brings me to the Driftlessarea most strongly, what
attracts me are the peoplebecause I had such a community
(55:48):
there. I still have so manyfriends there, and it's such a
wonderful feeling to go to, youknow, a cafe or the local food
co op and just bump into peopleI haven't seen in years and have
just to pick up theconversations right where we
left off. Again, I'm so gratefulfor your influence.
(56:09):
Over the years, ourconversations over coffee have
really affected me, inparticular, your thoughtful
emphasis on community andconnection between people and
and the landscape. It's reallygiven me a lot of food for
thought. So thank you.
Curt Meine (56:25):
I really have appreciated the chance to talk
writing with you. Let's continuethese conversations. Good luck
with the book. Congratulations.And, I can't wait for the next
set of stories that are gonnacome out of the experience of
going around with the book.
Tamara Dean (56:39):
Thank you, Kurt. Yeah. I'll definitely see you
around the Driftless area soon.I wish you all the best with
your writing too.
Curt Meine (56:47):
Thanks so much. We look forward to seeing you again
soon.
Tamara Dean (56:50):
Take care. Bye. Bye. This has been a University
of Minnesota Press production.The book Shelter and At Home in
the Driftless by Tamara Dean isavailable from University of
Minnesota Press.
Thank you for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.