In late 1999, a committee under the name Voices for the Land put out a call for Minnesotans to write 400-word essays about places they love, places they would want to pass on to the next generation, places they would miss if they were gone. More than 750 writers responded, and this past spring, Milkweed Editions published 25 of the essays in a small book called "Voices for the Land."
Beginning Sunday, August 13 and appearing every week inside the Sunday Variety section, the Star Tribune is pairing the work of staff photographer Brian Peterson with one of the many essays submitted. He is traveling throughout the state and spending time with the essayists in their special places. Designer Dave Braunger is creating the multimedia version for startribune.com.
What began as a kitchen-table discussion has expanded to include conversations throughout the state on issues of smart growth and land use. Readings by "Voices" authors were held in Duluth and Minneapolis, and public television station WDSE in Duluth is planning a documentary this fall featuring some of the top essayists. This past spring, 1000 Friends of Minnesota, a nonprofit group organized to help communities conserve and protect open spaces and promote sustainable living, adopted the Voices for the Land project as a way to continue the discussion among Minnesotans.
By photographing the sites of these essays and presenting them in our pages, we hope to document the ever-changing landscape and explore what it is about our state that Minnesotans find so appealing.
Ours is a somewhat ordinary state. We don't have mountains, geysers or redwood trees. Our natural beauty is subtler. Yes, we have the North Shore, the Boundary Waters and 10,000-plus lakes, but when it comes to spectacular monuments, we have few.
What we have are deep connections and relationships with the land; it's in our blood, formed by our ancestry and shaped by history.
Those connections are evident in our concerns about urban growth, battles for oak trees along an expanding freeway system, or fears about water quality in our lakes and streams. Our natural surroundings are what keep many native Minnesotans here and attract so many newcomers. But how can we grow and still preserve Minnesota's natural beauty for generations to come?
Author Paul Gruchow perhaps put it best in his introduction to "Voices for the Land": "A place is not a thing, it is a relationship. A location becomes a place only in the context of time, of history. Beauty has little to do with it, or rarity, or purity. It is quite possible to love an urban alley, or an old swamp, or an abandoned farmhouse, or a dirt road, as it is to love the Mississippi, or the North Shore or the Boundary Waters. Beauty in nature is like beauty among human beings: It lies in the eyes of its beholders. So it is to be expected that the places here described so affectionately are not, in the main, those one would first think of as the best Minnesota has to offer, nor those one would think first to try and save. But we should think of them and try to save them. Ordinary places are as necessary for a good community as are ordinary people. Let us celebrate them, places and people both, every one."
