Navigation

Our Graying Fate

I love old people.

I love to pick their brains, to hear their stories. I try to steal the lessons of their life’s mistakes in hopes that I won’t make them myself (not that it works). Parents are often accused of trying to live vicariously through their children – I’m guilty of trying to live vicariously through my elders. Considering how little time we are allotted here and how many possible lives one could live, the only way one can come close to living them all is to listen closely.

Having said that, this doesn’t mean I want to live in a retirement home right now, at 27. Yet, bartending in a Northern Door supper club and covering county events the last three years, I often feel as though I’m already there.

For my own peace of mind I now try to sit in the first row at all performances, presentations, and town meetings, for if I sit a few rows back I’m treated to a sea of white and silver interrupted only by the ominous bald spot or follicle-free dome. More than once I’ve lost track of my notes as my mind drifted to consider my own balding future. I stare at a fading hairline and wonder at what age it materialized; my future bald spot already embedded in my mind because I stare at it for hours everywhere I go on this aging peninsula.

I can’t escape the image of my future frailty, posture problems, thick glasses and alcoholic shakes. Maybe it’s beneficial to see these things now, in my youth, so I might make lifestyle changes. But I can’t say I wouldn’t mind occasionally standing in a room full of ignorant 20-somethings, living in the bliss of not knowing what the future holds. It’s one thing to daydream about how you’ll spend the rest of your days, but it’s quite another to be constantly reminded what they’re going to look and feel like.

At the typical Door County event I find I am not only the youngest person in the crowd, but that I’ve taken the title by a decade or two. Yet our community doesn’t have to be resigned to this graying demographic fate.

I recently returned from a three-month west coast road trip during which I visited several of the towns and cities featured in Men’s Journal’s 50 best places to live, and I can’t help but think Door County, with some reinvigoration, could claim a place on such a list.

Moab, Utah, a small city of less than 5,000 with scant winter employment (but loads of outdoor activity and good technology) was featured prominently. So were towns like McCall, Sandpoint, and Last Chance, Idaho. Haven’t heard of them? Neither had I. None of these towns claims more than 9,000 residents. However, they do all boast of great technological capabilities and they’re attracting telecommuters seeking to flee the city life and explore the outdoors. No, we don’t have their mountains, but they don’t have our lakes or arts.

We bemoan the loss of youth, the loss of community in Door County. But that’s about all we do. We need to realize that we should be attracting young workers and families to the area, not waving as they drive away.

Rare is the summer worker who finds their time in the county regrettable. Most speak whimsically of it even as their years and worldly experience have advanced, while they grumble about jobs in Chicago, Green Bay, Milwaukee or Anysuburb, USA. They love the scenery, the water, and the laid-back vibe that serves as a welcome reprieve from the clamor of city and suburban life.

The challenge we face is to partner that feeling with a year-round, thriving community.

How? We need jobs, obviously. We need activities for the under 50 set. We need, technology. We need, perhaps more than anything, new thinking to inhabit the realm of development and land use.

Four years ago the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a front-page story on Sister Bay’s aging population, already the oldest in the state. Affordable housing is a primary culprit in our rapid evolution into Naples North, but in the years since the Journal-Sentinel article ran, it seems we’ve built nothing but condominium units, not exactly the domain of young adults and families. Imagine if we had required that a small percentage of units be set aside for affordable housing to encourage our service workers to stay and raise families here?

Ten families sticking around turns into 20 more students at Gibraltar and Sevastopol, which means lower property tax referendums every two years. It means a few more customers for local businesses. It also means a few more participants in the bowling, basketball, baseball, and broomball leagues that have been seeing participation dwindle in recent years. It means a few more volunteers at our family centers, fundraisers and civic associations.

We often think we are an absurdly isolated community, but the small towns of Idaho I mentioned above aren’t any less isolated than we are. They suffer the same cruel winters, though theirs actually shut down their interstates and cut them off from travelers for days and weeks at a time.

We say we lack easy access to air travelers because Austin Strabel is an hour and a half drive to Sister Bay, but let’s take a closer look at that dreaded commute. The drive is mostly stoplight free and features spectacular water views for much of the duration. If I’m an Egg Harbor destination, I might even advertise to national travelers the opportunity to fly here, land in the early evening, and take Bayshore Drive to the village as the golden hues of the World-class Door County sunset guide your journey.

Compare this to flying into LA, Chicago, or Washington DC. Land at the wrong time at any of these destinations (which is now just about any time), and you face a two or three-hour trek through stop-and-go traffic before you hit the waterfront.

If we’re ever going to stem the waves of the aging tide on our peninsula, we’re going to have to snap out of our complacency and rethink the challenges we face. If we don’t, few of my generation will stick around to share our gray hair and bald spots in the decades to come.