The humble stars of curling

TOP: Dan Brown warms up before playing against the Olympic curlers at the Eau Claire Curling Club. BOTTOM: au Claire, Wis. — Laurie Marsh, left, and Lynita Delaney, right, sweep for Ava Roessler, 3, at the Eau Claire Curling Club. Delaney is Roessler's grandmother. Marsh and Delaney curl at the Centerville (Wis.) Curling Club.

Pat Borzi, a Minneapolis journalist who often strings for the New York Times, has a good eye for great stories. He recognized a golden opportunity when he heard of a fundraiser at the Eau Claire (Wis.) Curling Club. The Men's Olympic squad and the Skip (or leader) of the women's team would take on all comers to help raise money to send the olympians' families to Vancouver later this winter. As he told me "that's like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James heading down to the local gym to take on the guys in a pickup game." I shot the story in mid-November, and it appeared in the Times Dec. 15-16.

A friend reports from the frontlines of climate change

Joanna Kakissis was one of the five journalists in the Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism program at CU with me last year. Joanna was born in Athens, Greece, but grew up in Williston, N.D. She's particularly interested in immigrants and their stories (and she's particularly adept at such reporting, too, perhaps because of her finely tuned empathy). For the past few years she's been based in Athens, reporting for the New York Times and other publications. At CU, she focused on the climate justice movement and on climate refugees; people who are being forced out of their homes because of desertification (as in Darfur) or rising seas and mismanaged waterways (as in Bangladesh.) After the Scripps fellowship, she received an International Reporting Project fellowship, and headed to Bangladesh to report on what's happening there. Here's her report.

A beautiful place with some hard edges

Crestone, Colo., has been getting some buzz as "the new Sedona." Don't believe it. Sedona has become something of a New Age tourist trap. I've never been comfortable with the way Native American rituals and practices have been bent there to meet the needs of caucasian seekers. When you strip one element of a culture from its context (such as the sweat lodge, or fasting, or one tribe's concept of God) and then commercialize it, you risk all kinds of distortions. And outright danger. That appears to be the case in the sweat lodge deaths in Sedona in October.

Crestone's evolution as a tourist destination is happening in a much different way. There are 22 religious retreat centers in the area, but they are almost all attached to larger institutions and disciplines (Catholic, various branches of Buddhism and Hinduism). There isn't much in the way of tourist infrastructure in Crestone, but there are places to meditate for hours on end, places to chant and places to pray. The people I talked to there where distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of endowing the landscape (which is stunning) with special powers to relieve spiritual woes. Instead, they emphasize the idea of discipline and practice, of doing the work of the religion, whether it is Christian, Sufi, Hindu or Buddhist. See my story and photos in the Dec. 13 Minneapolis Star Tribune Travel section here.

Overblown, underreported Climategate

The e-mails that were stolen from scientists at England's top institution for studying climate change quickly became a political soccer ball for the politically motivated skeptics who seem to believe that scientists operate as they do — with an ideological ax to grind. (And judging from my conversations with relatively well-informed friends, the story introduced some skepticism where there wasn't any before).

There's been a lot of empty debate on the significance of the e-mails but very little reporting on how the e-mails were stolen, who stole them, what they say and whether or not anything in them actually diminishes the case for man-made climate change. (From what I have read, they don't in the least). My friend Keith Kloor at the Collide-a-scape blog has, as usual, been on top of the issue. This Wall Street Journal commentary piece is by one of the scientists whose correspondence was stolen. It's worth a read.

Scare tactics on climate change?

The debate on the scientific validity on climate change is artificially tilted toward the deniers in the mass media; under the mantle of objectivity, the tiny minority of scientists and larger group of politically motivated climate change skeptics get close to equal time to scientists who have spent years or decades researching atmospheric trends. While I think the lead on this piece from Reuters is misleading, I think what the scientist (Germany's top climate change expert H.J. Schnellhuber) has to say is very on target.

Invasive species: Already in an ecosystem near you

While nearly everyone is familiar with the concept of climate change, very few people feel any urgency about it. When you're thinking on a human timescale (and being human, that's the natural thing to do) it's hard to get concerned about the poles melting in 50 years. Or even in 20. But ecosystems don't change in predictable ways. Natural systems have checks and balances that are sometimes very resilient and durable. But small changes in climate can produce big changes in how an ecosystem functions. Almost every ecosystem in North America is undergoing some kind of shift that's directly attributable to invasive species or to endemic species that are rushing in to fill some kind of void as the climate shifts. I've been researching shifts in the nation's forests specifically.
Mountain pine beetle, an endemic species, wiping out mature lodgepoles in the Rockies, for instance. A massive change in the mountain landscape has already happened. Entire mountain valleys have turned rust red as the pines die. Forestry officials and scientists say almost all mature lodgepoles from the Rockies west will be gone within 5 years. That's fast, and understandable on human timescales. Scientists believe warmer winters, combined with drought and a human-controlled fire regime have allowed the pine beetles free reign. I'm not familiar with the Sonoran desert, but this article in the Tucson Weekly caught my eye. I wonder if and how climate change has a role in the spread of buffelgrass?

A bronze for travel photography

Over the weekend the Society of American Travel Writers announced the 2009 Lowell Thomas Awards for the best writing and photography from the past year. I was pleased to discover one of my colleagues had entered photos from a piece I wrote about Palmquist Farm in north-central Wisconsin. I won a bronze in the newspaper photography category. The contest was judged by the faculty at the University of North Carolina journalism school, here are the comments:

Bronze: Chris Welsch, “Down on the Farm,” Star Tribune, Minneapolis

This magnificent lead photo of the blurred skier subtly but effectively makes me linger on the page and the image. Bravo to the art director, too. Mood and sense of scene are so memorable.

Shooting for the NY Times at the Metrodome

I haven't written about Sports since I covered women's soccer at the Junior Olympics in Minnesota in 1988 (or something like that) and I haven't shot it since college. But happenstance and coincidence, the great friends of the freelance, delivered an assignment from the New York Times Sports page to shoot the switchover of the Metrodome from football field to baseball diamond in 12 hours. (The Vikings beat the Packers on Monday Night Football, and the Twins have a sudden death playoff with the Tigers today). I was at the Dome until nearly 2 a.m., and I was up editing and writing captions until 4 a.m. A fun night.

The mortal coil squeezes on the first day of summer

On Friday a kid came by the house wanting to mow the lawn for $2. He's new to the business, still doesn't feel like an aggrieved genius, and was pleased when I upped the ante to $10 without encouragement. The mower started, I went back to puttering, and 15 minutes later it stopped. When it didn't start again, I went back outside to see what was happening. He was pacing around the front yard muttering.

"What's going on Troy?"

"This is bogus. Bogus! It's bogus. I killed an animal," he said. "It ran out over there in front of the mower before i could stop it."

I checked. Limp and sinking into the grass, there lay a baby rabbit, completely perfect except for the gash across its brow. I felt a pain in my chest; empathy's boa constrictor around my heart. It was squeezing for the rabbit and the boy.

"Look," I explained, "this is tough, it's tough, but it wasn't your fault. It's just a freak accident. This is the time of year when baby rabbits are born."

I got him mowing again. A half hour later, the mower stopped again. He was in the backyard, sitting at the patio table, his head resting in one hand. He sagged like an old man in the courtyard of a hospital.

"Troy, what happened?"

"I killed two more rabbits," he said. He pointed to the viburnums, but didn't lift his head. I found the rabbits, these looking just as lifeless but more torn up. I got out some newspaper again for a quick burial.

"They're good animals right?" he asked. "They don't hurt nobody." "Yeah, that's true," I said. I thought briefly about explaining to him that rabbits have a dark side, these ones might have been suicidal, etc., but decided to be sincere instead.

"Troy, it's OK to be sad, but you don't have to feel guilty. Rabbits sometimes flatten themselves in the grass when they're scared. You aren't a bad person because of this."

I could tell his heart was breaking though. What started out as a happy chance to get 10 bucks had turned into a painful emotional ordeal. He finished, I paid him and he left. A few hours later our neighbor Tom came over looking for the bodies of two rabbits his cat had killed the previous night. He meant to pick them up earlier in the day but got sidetracked.

I hope Troy comes back next week as promised, so I can relieve him of two-thirds of his guilt.

Down the Middle Loup in Nebraska's Sandhills

A few scenes from this year's canoe trip. We paddled the Middle Loup in Nebraska's Sandhills, the largest area of sand dunes in the Western Hemisphere. A thin layer of grass has stabilized the dunes for a few hundred years; a big drought could set the sand free again. Spectacular, and seldom traveled country.

Going with the flow

I took my nephew Torrin on his first camping trip last spring. The thing I feared — that it would rain constantly — came to pass. But it didn't ruin the experience for either of us. Here's the story, which ran in the Star Tribune on June 21. We just got back from this year's trip, down the Middle Loup River in Nebraska's Sandhills with my friend Geoff Goodwin and his two sons, Connor and Ethan. The weather treated us with kindness; we had thunderstorms, but only at night.

A tale of survival

I am continually amazed and the resilience and spiritual power of the native people of the Americas. While most American Indian history is written as though the tribes were dead and gone, I thought "Selling Your Father's Bones" was notable for its inclusion of the living Nez Perce in the retelling of the story of their forced exodus. This review was in the May 10 Books section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Transition time

On Friday May 1, I graduated from the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism. It was an amazing year, and I will be counting the gifts that come from it for the rest of my life. In nine months, I took six graduate school courses in six departments: Philosophy, law, religious studies, journalism, art history and biology. I also took a class on yogic meditation at Naropa University, one of two Buddhist universities in the United States. Being back in school as an adult was fun; I didn't feel any of the pressure or anxiety I did during the first go around. At this point, I realize how much a privilege learning is, and what a joy.
At times, though, what I learned was a grim litany. I already had a strong sense that the Earth is in a period of transition; that human industry has transcended the forces we normally think of as nature as a driving force of planetary change. But week after week, as we met with the nation's top scientists on climate change (primarily from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, both based here but also from the University of Colorad0) we heard things are worse than the public knows. The scientists we met weren't polemicists or demagogues, they were quiet people who study the historical record, who analyze variables and look at the conclusions. To a person, they all said we're cooked, the question is how bad will it be?
This isn't the place to go into the specifics. But we all have to face the question of what to do. Consume less and reproduce less are the most immediate and practical answers. There is a temptation to throw up one's hands because the task is so enormous. It's worth trying though. Every act of love, every stretch of the imagination, every breath, in fact, brings home the beauty of the world, and to the point that we are a part of it, not apart from it.

The flight of time

This is the last week of my fellowship at the University of Colorado at Boulder. As I age, time accelerates. I have felt this acceleration acutely in the past few weeks. As a function of a human life, this is a natural outcome. The more days we live, the smaller each day gets in the scheme of our whole existence. I have a specific, early memory, of how much slower time was when my life was so much shorter. When I was 5 years old, lying in the grass and watching an ant colony, a few hours of careful observation represented what a few days does now, as a proportion of my total life. Yesterday, our apple tree was in full bloom, and when I went outside at sunrise to pick up the paper, the sight of it froze me. Beauty that intense pulls me into the moment and out of the constant monologue in my head. Last night, three inches of wet snow fell, and the apple tree now is a doubly intense vision of ephemera. Today, the snow will melt, and tomorrow, the blossoms will fall.

Silke held up one of my jackets to make a background, and I took a photo. The woman holding the jacket is as much a part of the image as the flowers, calling out to bees.

Traveler's Eye Workshops: A mobile school for photographers

The fortified town of Orvieto occupies a tower of volcanic tufa on the road between Rome and Florence. Within the walls of the old city, no cars are allowed. On a pedestal help up to the sky, the city moves at a slower pace than much of the rest of motorized, industrialized Italy. My friend and colleague Richard Sennott proposed that we start a photo workshop in the town, using the San Lodovico convent as a base. The medieval cloister has frescoes thought to be painted by Michelangelo, the food is traditional Umbrian peasant fare, the rooms simple and clean. So, Traveler's Eye Workshops was born. We're running our first trip June 13, with two more to follow in September. The September trips are filling up fast.

The price of paradise in Costa Rica

Here's my last story as a staff writer and photographer at the Star Tribune. After 22 years, 50 countries, 45 states and most of the counties in Minnesota, I probably deserved the chance to say so long in a more formal way; but in the January round of buyouts, the managers didn't let reporters say goodbye to the readers. They didn't want any reminders of the paper's ongoing diminishment. No sour grapes though; this story was a fitting send-off. In my career, I was fortunate to have the freedom to write as I saw fit, to cover the dark side of travel as well as its joys. The over-developed, under-policed Costa Rican town of Tamarindo would be an excellent subject for a dissertation on what can go wrong when a tourist town doesn't plan carefully to protect its own soul.

Experiments

Our tiny cabin has taught us to live simply, and made it easier to balance in handstand.

Great Sand Dunes National Park, March 22, 2009.

Sand and light

An assignment to write about the 22 religious communities that have settled in Crestone, Colorado, took me to the San Luis Valley, near the border with New Mexico. The valley is pool-table flat, suspended at 8,000 feet between two 14,000 foot mountain ranges. Rivers and streams carry broken rock and gravel down from the high peaks, and winds from the southwest carry them back toward the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Over thousands of years, this pattern has built an area of sand dunes that covers 30 square miles and is as high as 750 feet. After spending several days visiting temples, we spent a day at the dunes. Even in a howling windstorm, it was spectrally beautiful. As the sun pushes shadows across the sand, shifts in light and dark create a dynamic flow. The streams and fuzziness along the sharp seams in this photo are grains of sand, carried into flight by the wind.

A work in progress in more than one way

I've left my job at the Star Tribune, although even as I write that statement, the first clause of the sentence appears to disintegrate on its own. Even without any action on my part, what I thought of as "my job" had been shifting and twisting with the difficult fortunes of the paper itself. Water under the bridge. I'm in the last few months of my fellowship at the University of Colorado, enjoying my studies, my home in the mountains and the precious gift of time to think. 

This semester I'm taking an art history course called "Memory and Place," which is as broad and daunting as the title suggests. We've just spent five weeks studying how Germany and Israel deal with memorializing the Holocaust, and now we're onto the aborigines and  white Australia. My other course is "Land Use, Sustainability and Climate Change," which sounds dry, but actually pertains to the survival of humanity. Stay tuned.