Fenced In

Lake Michigan from Algoma, WI

Sometime in the next decade, none of the three of us will have a reason to return to Green Bay.

We grew up together there. One of my two friends, I have known since first grade, the other since about 8th. We sat masked for COVID on the back porch of the house of one of my friend's parents, a house I first visited 43 years ago in order to tape some Ted Nugent albums. We are all in our mid 50s. Our parents are either dead or not doing so well, and the in-laws or parents are all that keep us coming back. Soon, they won't be with us, and our siblings all live in other cities. I had the acute sense that, in spite of not having gotten together as the three of us in about 20 years, this was closing in on the end of something.

One of my friend's father died almost 50 years ago. We were in Cub Scouts at the time. It was my first encounter with death. Our den mother led us scouts to his house, where we stood outside and sang. He came to the large picture window, gazed up at us, and petted his dog, Penny, who came to be with him. I, too, would probably be dying young, about now, if not for the miracles of modern medicine. About five years ago, in a routine procedure, they discovered a spot of cancer which was easily removed. Upon further investigation, it turns out that I have an inherited genetic mutation that makes me susceptible to certain types of cancer. Frequent screenings should keep me safe. But I had a great grandfather who died young—was it from cancer, and did I get the mutation from him? A great uncle also died of a cancer associated with the mutation.

This visit to Green Bay has put endings in my mind, for obvious reasons, but the sense of ending extends well beyond family and friends. The backyard in which we sat used to be wide open into the neighbors' yards. Sitting back there felt like sitting in a field. Since then, every neighbor has put up a sizable fence. The backyard is fenced in. In some ways, I feel fenced in, and wonder if we're not all fenced in.

I say this because everything in this city I grew up in feels tenuous to me. The Packers have purchased land, some of it with houses and businesses on it, and razed it all to create a park and spanking new buildings for businesses such as Microsoft and breweries and hotels. I remember back when a place called "The Stadium Bakery" sat on the corner of Ridge Road and Lombardi. It certainly wasn't swanky. It certainly could not withstand the version of progress playing out in those blocks.

My parents years ago moved out of the city and into a development being built on an old farm. What is a farm in the 20th and 21st century? It is a place where various chemicals, some derived from petroleum products, are used to coax and manipulate the soil into producing more nutrients than it would naturally. It is a place where various chemicals kill weeds and insects that harm productivity. It is a place where antibiotics are given to livestock to enhance their productivity. That was what was happening on the land my parents live on before they moved there. I may have drank milk and ate cheese from that very farm, taking in some of the chemicals used in their production.

And before it was a farm, it was part of the Oneida Nation Reservation. The Oneidas fell on hard times, and had to sell off most of their land. Since the mid 80s, they have come back, first with gaming and now with a diversified business and investment strategy. They are a potent economic player in Green Bay. The Oneida Nation gate at Lambeau Field proves it. Recovery can happen.

Not only has the Oneida Nation recovered, in some ways, from the economic devastation of previous centuries, so has the Fox River. When my dad was a child growing up in Green Bay, he could swim at Bay Beach, where the Fox empties into Green Bay, which is a large inlet off Lake Michigan. You couldn't swim there when I was a kid because the pollution from the mills on the Fox River was so bad. The Fox and the Bay have been cleaned up. Soon, swimming will be back. Well, it will be back if the water level of the Bay recedes a little. Because of climate change, the entire Great Lakes region has been getting hit with unusual levels of rainfall. Water is up everywhere, even where I live, in Minnesota.

I wanted a picture of Bay Beach for this essay, but it was closed, perhaps because of COVID or maybe because of the high water level. Instead, I got a picture of Lake Michigan from Algoma, about 30 miles east of Green Bay. (See above) What impact did living near such a large and, at times, forbidding body of water have on my sense of place and self? I am not sure. But my guess is that it has been considerable. On the drive over, we passed mostly farm fields that have been carved out of once was wilderness. No wilderness remains in this part of the state unless it happens to be in a state park, and even then the woods are usually second or even third growth. 

The same general mindset that flattened the forests for the precise geometry of chemical-laden rectangular farm fields has kept me alive with medical science: objectifying, categorizing, and manipulating. Clearly, the mindset that has led to colonialism and travel to the moon and modern medicine is the most powerful the world has ever seen—in the short term. Everything seemed so fragile to me in Wisconsin this time. Part of this is my aging parents and the aging of my friends. Some of this is the sense that this system that has supported and nurtured me all my life is unsustainable.

By objectifying and classifying matter as inert stuff to be manipulated, including our bodies, we have learned to extract extraordinary resources from the earth to sustain a ridiculously large human population. Something has to give. Certain cultures, according to my reading, believe matter has intrinsic meaning and is not inert objects. They believe it must be treated with reverence and respect rather than manipulated. For instance, according to an ethnography of the Peruvian Urarina people, they carefully bury the placenta after birth. To them, it is not inert matter. Proper burial leads to a good psychological and social make-up for the baby. This Urarina mindset may prove more resilient, long term, than the spectacular world of contemporary society. I have been born into an unsustainable trajectory that I have become utterly dependent on.

Perhaps we have all fenced ourselves in.

Certainly, this wasn't the intention. Objectification happened because it worked in the short and obvious term. It was more widely applied and the manipulation of nature and objects and our bodies became more and more extreme, and all of this seemed quite useful and commendable. The extraction of resources accelerated.

I don't know what to do about all this. I wish I could say, "Just step back and let nature take its course." But that is unrealistic: it would lead to billions of people dying. The entire globe has become dependent on the massive manipulation of nature just for survival. Yes, the Oneidas recovered in some, but I assume not all, ways. And, yes, the Fox River and Green Bay recovered from the toxic pollution of the 70s and 80s. So we can recover in a variety of ways. I have to hope it happens: I have daughters. 

But something is deeply amiss. I sense that all of us humans are more connected to nature than we may rationally know. At a subconscious level, do we sense the precariousness of the climate, our habitat, our food sources, and the danger other large animals and plants are in? I suspect so. And it may be driving us to extreme feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.