Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
I’ve written before about the unique culture and beautiful topography of the midwest’s Driftless Region, the place I was lucky enough to grow up. It’s a personal obsession for obvious reasons, and I’m far from the only one who has been enchanted by its crystalline streams, magnificent bluffs and lush natural swales.
Like my parents, writer Tamara Dean and her partner moved to rural Vernon County, Wisconsin in the heart of the Driftless as adults. Her collection of essays, Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless, was released last month and I had the pleasure not only of reading it, but gabbing with her about its contents.
Enjoy our conversation about everything from the notorious swapping of romantic partners that happens in the Driftless, known by locals as the “Kickapoo Switcheroo” (after the Kickapoo river that runs through Vernon County), to the very real and horrifying risks of living in a place that is quite literally ground zero for tick-borne illness.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Caroline Carlson, The Daily Yonder: Your story is so familiar to me because my parents did the same thing – moving from a city to the Driftless because they fell in love with the landscape, because they wanted to live a more sustainable life. One of the things that really interests me about this, about Viroqua [the town where I grew up] in general, is this tension between almost “rural gentrification” and people who are earnestly following a desire to live in a less populated, tighter community with more access to nature. I really liked that you seem to come at this without illusions, I mean, to the best of your abilities. You were ready to take on debt, and you knew hard labor would be involved. And still, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about assimilating in a rural community that you are not a part of in the same way that people like Hugh, the neighbor who you write about, has such deep ties to the land.
Tamara Dean: Pretty quickly after we moved to Vernon County, we recognized that even if we lived there for 30 years, we would never be considered locals. The locals were the families whose farms had been founded in the 1800s and most of them knew each other and had marriages of families they were very familiar with – not only the families – but their ways of life and traditions. On the other hand, we didn’t expect to be ostracized either, and we weren’t, although we heard some comments that felt a little disparaging like “Oh, you’re nature-loving hippies” when we actually felt ourselves to be the farthest thing from hippies.
We both came from the IT world very much focused on data and science, and we were very curious about all our experiments on the property. On the other hand, we also didn’t feel the same as the families who had come to rural Vernon County because of the Waldorf school or other alternative practices that attracted them. We didn’t have young children, so we weren’t integrated with that part of the community. We were drifting in this in-between space, and I think that we built goodwill with both sides of this community, the newcomers and the old timers, by really participating in the community. Whether it was our labor, or contributions, or wisdom in the form of building a nonprofit like the Driftless community radio, which operates WDRT. David and I were co-creators of that and the Driftless Writing Center, and the project that we undertook called Stories from the Flood, which asked 2018 flood survivors to tell their story. Insights that we gleaned from these personal narratives became touchstones for policy makers and public planners as they addressed the increasing need for flood resilience in that area.
So it was a balance, but we came to it eventually, flowing smoothly among both communities. And I so admired my farmer neighbors whose families had been there for generations. I depended on them for wisdom about, you know, the soil and the water. I learned so much from them, and they were always generous and compassionate, no matter what they might have said behind our backs. I’m not really sure, because we probably did appear to them like hippies, but I was grateful for all their contributions and their kindnesses.
DY: In recent years, my dad waged a full out war on garlic mustard [an invasive species] on our property, complete with blow torches, the whole thing. And it caused him a lot of stress and worry, because, like you, my parents are really conscientious and really want to be good stewards of the land. I thought it was really interesting that in your essay “Blowdown,” you wrote about kind of “playing the long game” with invasive species. Okay, so human folly introduced them, but nature is nature, and who are we to try to turn back the wheels of time? Things are going to continue. And maybe it’s okay that, for instance, garlic mustard is left to thrive now that it’s here. I hadn’t encountered that idea ever before.
TD: I mean, I think about this a lot. I thought about it and wrote about it in “Blowdown,” but other essays as well. What if we did imagine 10,000 years into the future, is this constant mowing of wild parsnip going to matter? Yeah, we have designs on the land, but those are our human designs, and we are not necessarily tuned into nature’s wisdom. I don’t want to make it out to be too mystical. Certainly, if you are trying to grow a crop and raise money to pay your bills, then it makes sense to manage weeds so that you can get a decent yield.
I don’t want to be too Pollyannaish about this, but in our case, we were leaving the fields fallow until we found a use that felt right for us, which ended up being the pollinator habitat in the old hay field, but it did become a psychic battle, a somewhat frustrating one, as you described. We didn’t have garlic mustard at all, which was unusual, but that wild parsnip was completely covering one of the fields. The thing about wild parsnip is, if you don’t get it before the seeds mature, cutting it down will just spread the seeds and you’ll have a worse infestation the next year.
I do think a lot about the control of nature and people’s attempt to control it at all. So in that essay, “Blowdown.” I mentioned my friend Sanha, who’s a Buddhist monk, and when I was talking to her about what to do about all these downed trees after the tornado, I was so beset with indecision. She replied simply, “Can you do nothing?” I’d never thought of that before. It’s not that doing nothing is necessarily the best answer or the one you should go with in the moment, but it can always be on the table of possibilities, and that has stuck with me too. Our attempts to contain and control the land and landscape can go to extremes, and sometimes it might be wise to consider doing nothing.
DY: In the essay “Shelter and Storm” for which the book is named, you talk about the challenges of building a house, specifically the challenges of building a house with your partner, which I admit, sounds hard. The thing that I pulled out of that is is more frivolous than the whole essay itself, but it made me laugh when you mentioned the “Kickapoo Switcheroo,” which is something that I grew up knowing about and watching (grateful that my parents never participated), but it made me wonder if there were other sorts of cultural oddities that you discovered deep in the Driftless that surprised you?
TD: I mean, it was our first experience in a rural community, so a lot about the community surprised us. It surprised us that people would just walk into your house without knocking. We became used to that. Especially when we were still building the house, they would just invite themselves in and walk around. But even after we were moved in, they would, you know, do the sort of one knock and then open the door without finding out whether you’re around or in the shower or whatever. I mean, I often say that it seemed every time I walked out the front door in the Driftless I was struck by something odd or amazing, whether that was the raccoon swinging through the oak trees in the backyard like monkeys or a snake in an overhand knot on a deer path. It seemed very dramatic, and the complexities about the environment and the community were fascinating to me. Before I moved there, I was primarily a fiction writer and a technical writer, that’s how I made my living. But once I encountered these strange experiences, I recognized that the drama of reality was so much more compelling than the fictional dramas I was dreaming up. And that’s why I wanted to write these essays.
DY: Yeah, I think these communities are so interesting and rich, maybe especially from an outside perspective. I don’t even have that because I grew up directly in it, but I can imagine it being kind of like Prairie Home Companion or something, where you’re like, “What the heck, these are some wild social dynamics, and an absolutely fascinating place.”
TD: Absolutely. The way people would stop for tours of our house, that’s the familiarity that can feel a little bit invasive at times. It’s the flip side of that community cohesion that also helps you out when you’re in a bind, like when our prairie fire got out of control, or when our water cistern, a rainwater cistern, which was our only domestic water source, emptied mysteriously while we were on vacation. People just came to help without asking. Nobody asked for money, nobody asked what our political leanings were. It was just: “Here we are. We’re here to help.”
DY: In “Fire and Time” you write “I sensed that most locals would have looked askance at taking a parcel out of production given no monetary compensation.” From my experience in the area, I know this to be true as well, but I’m struck by this tension that if folks living in rural areas don’t do something like this [conservation project], then who will, right? I think it underscores the fact that rural communities, or rural people, are often asked to make sacrifices for the greater good of the nation, or even the good of the planet. It doesn’t seem very fair to ask rural people to give up their land without compensation, but we also need to save the pollinators and ultimately the planet. Do you have any ideas about how we could make this more fair?
TD: I absolutely acknowledge that we were in a privileged situation, because we could make our living not off the land. We had great internet in rural Vernon County because of Vernon Telephone. They had great grants actually, from the federal government, to provide broadband in rural areas. So that’s how we made our living. I agree, it’s not fair to ask people who do depend on the land for their living to give up production. What I think is that the Farm Bill could do a much better job of compensating landowners to engage in [conservation] techniques – whether it’s pollinator habitat or buffer zones near waterways to prevent erosion, or the Conservation Reserve Program. I recognize it might not meet the same income that they would get from growing corn or soy, but it could make up for some of that. I don’t think it’s fair for rural people to have to make all of the sacrifices to save our planet (and I realize that’s a bit of an exaggeration). Could we incentivize or, how could we motivate urban growers? Make use of vertical space? We could think about solutions like that.
DY: My last question is a little bit philosophical – something that occurred to me, just kind of thinking about this collection as a whole. First, I’m so sorry about the suffering that Lyme disease has caused you. I know a lot of other people – I’m sure we both do – in similar situations, and it’s just terrible. I don’t know if this resonates with you, but it almost feels like a little bit of poetic justice that one of the most beautiful places on earth – and I say that as someone who’s had the great fortune of traveling pretty widely – is also ground zero for one of the worst insects ever. How is it that the natural beauty of a place can be so rich and beautiful and nourishing, and also so genuinely dangerous. Do you think about that?
TD: Yes, and I tried to embody it in most of the essays: this idea of “shelter and storm.” Both in material and theme there’s an aspect of refuge and comfort, but at the same time, there’s threat and danger. And I think any landscape comes with that tension, whether it’s earthquakes or volcanoes or wildfires.
But the ticks were so difficult to deal with. I know a lot of friends who got Lyme disease and even worse diseases, such as Anaplasmosis or Ehrlichiosis, from ticks in the Driftless area, and they continue to live there because they’re not willing to give up that beauty, that magical landscape and the community it attracts. But for me, I was so upset about not being the person I used to be, about being exhausted, not knowing when I woke up in the morning if I’d be able to do anything normal. I thought, it’s not worth it to me. We were debating, should we stay or should we go? And then, as I wrote in the essay “Slow Blues,” when I had harvested kale and emptied the bag and found all those ticks at the bottom, I thought, okay I don’t feel comfortable walking through the prairie or even the woods. Pruning, mowing, all that kind of stuff was off limits for me, and now even gardening. When it turned out that the enemy was in my beloved spot, where I spent so much time and found most satisfaction, that was the last straw. It wasn’t worth it to me to continue risking a tick borne illness. But some people find the trade-off palatable.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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