Broadening Our Horizons

The white pine is special. A tenacious exclamation point on the shore of the Door, tall and craggy, it rises above surrounding forest punctuating the skyline with its stout silhouette. The rugged aspect of this tree contrasts with the soft look of its long needles in clusters of five. One particular white pine was a favorite when I was a kid. It provided respite from humming hordes of hungry mosquitoes. It extended my horizons. Then again, I really didn’t need a reason at all. Like many kids, I just loved to climb trees in summer.

One January, however, while still a college student, I found myself beneath my white pine. It’s one of those giants that raises its asymmetric limbs well above the surrounding forest, on a hill adjacent to the lake. Branches perfectly spaced, I’d climbed it countless times in childhood and even used to read books up there with Lake Michigan’s vast and distant horizon as a backdrop. It beckoned.

Trouble was the previous day had been one of those miserable “warm” winter days with a snowy rainy mix, but overnight the temperature had plummeted to sub zero with an intense wind that wouldn’t let up. The climb wouldn’t be easy, so I started up tentatively, carefully threading through those familiar large limbs. They were partially coated with ice and oddly rigid. Wrapping my arms around the branches so as not to “slip my grip,” I stayed near the trunk. The higher I went, the more the biting wind bit. Above surrounding cedars, the scene was surreal. A fog rose from Lake Michigan’s “warm” water mingling with horizontal, wind-driven snow.

From that lofty perch one could look down on a mix of steam and snow forming a multitude of ghostly white snakes, sidewinding along the whitecaps. Surroundings blended into a grayish blurry haze. The arctic blast had transformed my tree into an enormous wooden tuning fork. It was vibrating with a harmonic hum that blended with the “whispering” needles. I would never again look at my tree quite the same way. That experience gave me a whole new perspective on this magical place where the “Shining Big Sea Water” touches the shore.

I didn’t think much about the risk in risky behavior, way back then. I definitely recommend against winter tree climbing, even if you know the tree well, as I did. There are many other ways to gain new perspectives, a lot safer, though not necessarily easier.

Changing your perspective is what learning is all about. It implies stepping outside your comfort zone, embracing new information, modifying your point of view, broadening your horizons. Learning enhances living. But like my winter tree climb, new perspectives can also imply discomfort.

Ecological education, for example, can be a bit unsettling. You begin to understand how much we really don’t know about nature, and start to realize how much damage this artifact we call civilization, is doing to our world. Wisconsin conservationist and author Aldo Leopold put it well: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

Challenges: The Door Peninsula is witnessing some disconcerting trends including tainted wells, mired and murky streams and rivers, manure spills, and a huge dead zone in the bay of Green Bay. This is partly due to privatized agricultural profits and implicit socialized ecological costs. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. The karst topography of the peninsula makes it difficult to deal with human as well as animal waste. And there is no shortage of toxic products applied to the land to deal with “perceived” pests.

Hopeful signs: Organizations such as: The Nature Conservancy; The Door County Land Trust; Safe Lawns in Door County (in conjunction with Door Land Owners); Door County Wild Ones; and The Climate Change Coalition are having a positive impact on the health of land and water upon which we all depend.

Thanks to media outlets, such as this Peninsula Pulse, there has been a growing public awareness, a sign that perspectives may be changing. For the sake of our grandchildren, I certainly hope so. We all need to do be better stewards.

Bottom Line: Centuries after we are all long gone, kids should continue to be inspired by the rugged beauty of ancient white pine silhouetted against a pastel sky over the clear and clean expanse of “The Shining Big Sea Water.”

My white pine still beckons…