Exploration, in all of its many forms!

As spring turns to summer and fall already looms on the horizon, a multitude of things come to mind when thinking about the ways in which I often fill my time. Compiling a list of my favorite things to do is a bit difficult because I feel like my interests fall over a wide spectrum, however here’s an attempt at capturing a handful of ways I like to spend my time...

As my partner (both in LAKES and in crime),
Esther and I understand it's imperative to build a fort before map making.

On a stormy day I suppose some of my favorite things to do include exploring the vast, open-world of Skyrim, reveling in the existential reflections of Simone de Beauvoir or revolutionary work of Audre Lorde, or losing myself in unnerving films like Sinister, The Shining, or The Witch. Video games are by far one of the best ways to spend a rainy day and aside from Skyrim, I also love virtually any Pokemon game, playing God and building houses on the Sims, and slaughtering the undead in games like Bloodborne and Resident Evil.

An incredible image of a thriving wild rice field that I found
in the UW Madison archive (Northwest Wisconsin, circa 1900)

When it comes to reading, I don’t even know where to begin! I absolutely lose myself in the works of Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, Antonio Gramsci, Albert Camus, Sandra Cisneros, and Stuart Hall. The timelessness of born poets captures the capacity of humanity’s ability to endure and inspires us to find a common ground through the simplest of ideas.

In terms of this summer’s research, my love for reading persists as I find myself unable to set down any book relating to urban/rural dynamics, agriculture, and indigenous ecological approaches. I feel that science is a limitless void of answers and information, but there exists something deeper and quite necessary to guide one through this vacuum of ‘facts’, and that good writing inspires and channels exactly this. Moreover, I’m a bit of a history buff and while reading classic literature provides fascinating insights to the many histories that surround a time or place, archival work provides a mosaic of the past through some of the most unexpected forms. Already this summer at the archives we’ve begun reading through Stout yearbooks from the early 1900’s and a young lady's diary from the 1800s! Various texts like the these and others (postcards, oral histories, old maps and surveys) abound in odd little snippets of the historical ecology that has defined the Red Cedar watershed; I feel that there is so much to learn from these stories and am excited to see what else archival work has in store for us.

Liz and I during our boat tour of Lake Menomin

As much as I love my lazy days full of reading and video games, I definitely love to go outside and check out local hiking spots. I’m originally from California and I do miss running around in the redwoods, but I must say that I’m overwhelmed with how beautiful the upper midwest is with its many lakes, rivers, and fields. My love for travel and exploration is certainly one enduring theme and it ties directly into my experience here with LAKES. I’ve been completely immersed in a new place, full of complex stories and issues. We are all working together to learn more about Menomonie's past, present, and future in hopes to unearth what I'm sure will be equally complex solutions. While the outdoors feel like home to me, a large degree of my passion also exists within my imagination whether I'm on a couch or in the field. Thus far, my interests have absolutely inspired and overlapped with the many adventures I've had in Menomonie this summer and I can't wait to see where they will take me!