I am an old woman now. My once-blond hair has turned the silvery white I had always hoped for. My smile lines now imprinteded in the wrinkles on my face and the ache in my bones seems to go deeper with each time it rains. Oh, my body may be wearing out, but my spirit is as alive as it has always been. I have seen the ideas of a small group of individuals merge into the collective conscience. I have seen many changes in my time here and I have a story to tell.

I graduated from St. Olaf College here in Northfield, in 2004 and decided to stay, and continue setting down my roots in this place. During my college year, I felt sense of place here in the Cannon River Valley which drew me back to begin the work of re-inhabitation.. When I think about the way things were fifty years ago, I am amazed at the transformation toward a sustainable way of life that has occured. These changes would have never been thought possible during the early twenty-first century.

I remember planting trees on Earth Day 2004. Back then, it was a small, but dedicated group of us who were involved those sort of celebrations. Now, the Cannon River Valley Bioregion celebrates "re-inhabiting our place" during the week of March 20th, surrounding the Spring Equinox. Community members of all ages join together for music and outdoor festivities all along the Cannon River and people enjoy the work that has been done to restore the natural areas around the region. Ecosystem management is such a central community-building activity and all the local schools, colleges and church groups are all involved in prairie restorations, tree-planting, native species erradication and water conservation. It's no longer a trend, it's a way of life.

It seems so long ago when citizens were concerned about urban sprawl and the imposition of big corporations out on Highway three. Now the movement to re-inhabit rural areas, and small communities has become a way of life for the majority of the population.

The Just Foods Coop was just starting up with only 600 members the year I graduated. And to think that it is now the most popular food provider in the area. Chain supermarkets have become nearly obsolete although the one still exists due to its downtown locale. The shift really began because of consumer demands for local and organic produce and free-range meats; they now purchase a large percentage of the food they stock from local farmers.

When oil prices started rising in the early part of the twenty-first century, the old food system that trucked produce around the country (and to think that food used to travel 1300 miles before it reached your plate) became completely inefficient and there was a rapid shift to a local-food based economy.

I was out at the farmer's market the other day with my grandchildren. It continues to be an important community gathering place, and during our region's growing season, most of us buy our foods solely from local producers. Community life has really flourished in this place and celebrations of harvest time are enjoyed by all. Farmers continue to produce sustainable yields. The CSA (community-supported agriculture) model became a wide-spread phenomena and shareholders and community members started getting more involved in helping out with local agriculture. My oldest daughter runs one of the CSA farms in just outside of Northfield. She grows the best tomatoes and butternut squash in the Cannon River Valley.

My other son does research in agroforestry. By combining crops and trees, this has greatly reduced erosion and water run-off. The research from the Land Institute has also provided a brilliant model of farming like a prairie. I remember back when my friend Dave Legvold began doing no-till farming and challenged the conventional farming methods of the area. It didn't take long for people to realize he was on to something. Eventually he catalyzed the sustainable farmers movement in the Cannon River Valley Region that created a model for sustainable agriculture throughout the Great Plains Bioregion.

The year I graduated from St. Olaf, a group of inspired classmates created a proposal for a student-run farm. Their vision was realized two years later. The farm was a wonderful success and recruited more students for the college than they had ever imagined. Soon after both St. Olaf and Carleton colleges began small-scale farming operations and for a while students from across the country came here to learn about sustainable agriculture and renewable energy. Now there are more local colleges where students are encouraged to pursue "homecoming majors," -- going out to learn in other parts of the nation and the world and then to bring knowledge back home to compliment the local knowledge they learn while growing up.

Back when I was in college, they were just beginning to consider alternative energy and the installation of first wind turbine was happened the year after I graduated. Little did I know that three more turbines would follow in the next 5 years, making St. Olaf the first school in the nation to produce one-hundred percent of its own energy. After this, the trend toward renewables caught on like wildfire as people realized that renewable energy was sustainable and economical.

The local organization ReNew Northfield was also an important leader in pursuing sustainable energy that is suitable for our bioregion. In the Cannon River Valley, our energy resources now come from wind, solar, and biomass. Other areas of the country have adapted based on their local energy resources as well. Wind power, which is really in indirect form of solar energy, is the most commonplace alternative energy in the region. Most family farms own a wind turbine that were initially purchased for an additional income source while sustainable practices were being developed. There are also wind turbines on farm lands and in restored prairies around the region that provide energy for the towns in the Cannon River Valley.

Another energy consumer, automobiles have become extremely fuel efficient and alternative transportation has become the prefered mode of travel. The cars that do still exist are electric or clean hydrogen and they are mostly community-owned and shared. Bike routes have made summer travel easy and an energy efficient bus system is easily accessible.

The Center for Sustainable Living holds regular workshops and is highly attended. I've been a member since 2006 and have seen it grow and diversify throughout the years. Members have increased exponentially since the awakening of the town to bioregional thought and it has been an important teaching tool for all. The television show "roots" was a big hit with other local networks who began broadcasting their own show about local knowledge and community members.

Way back when I was still in college, CSL began a composting program run by several volunteers collecting organic "waste" with bicycles. It was pretty small-scale to start out with, but the idea soon caught on and neighborhood composting was implemented throughout Northfield. In fact, the whole idea of waste began changing right around this time, when people realized that there was no "away" and that we needed to seriously look at our consumptive habits. That was back when garbage trucks still existed. What a silly system that was! Now there are only recycling collection, reusable container collection and organic composting. We don't even call it waste anymore, we call it "nutrient cycling."

It's been hard work, with a lot of imaginative, innovative and passionate people involved in the path toward sustainability. But if people hadn't started imagining what the world could be, in the early part of the century, we would have never arrived at the place we are now. It fills me with joy to know that we will leave my grandchildren, and generations to come, a sustainable world to live in.

 

There have been other imaginary accounts of sustainable futures written and my ideas for writing this account were also inspired by these visionary authors. I want to give credit to Guy Dauncy, Earth Future, Lestor Brown, Earthday 2054, and the Eco-Cleveland website.

These accounts are fictional and are intended only as an exploration in the imagination of what our world could look like. As Lestor Brown writes, "The task of building a sustainable society is an enormous one that will take decades rather than years." I realize many practical problems may be overlooked, but my goal is not to offer a comprehensive plan, but rather a vision of what could be possible based on the expansion of current bioregional trends in the Cannon River Valley.