JULY 10, 2021 – Thursday evening on our way to the cabin, we stopped at the Beechmoor, a classic, northwest Wisconsin bar and grill. It’s at the south end of Whitefish Lake, which, as the water flows, is two lakes down from our own Grindstone Lake. The bar was crowded (vaccination cards, people?), and besides, it was a beautiful evening, so we took a table on the deck overlooking a 100-foot dock with a pontoon at the end—visible through the towering pine guarding the grassy slope from the bar and grill down to the water’s edge.
The décor was on the cheesy side, so to speak, and canned mushrooms downgraded my wife’s assessment of an otherwise acceptable hamburger. Hidden under the curly fries in my “Greek wrap basket” was a decorative piece of . . . kale.
As we munched on our dinner food, we heard snippets of conversations at the other two tables on the Beechmoor deck. At one table sat two older couples. I caught talk about the local dump. (Recycling is free; for trash you pay by the pound.) At the other table, a couple was chit-chatting with the wait person about an up-coming (immediate) family reunion—son from California; daughter from Pennsylvania; meeting in the middle—at a rented cabin on Lac Courte d’Oreilles, which sprawls between Whitefish and Grindstone.
We all finished at about the same time. The dump people, bearing bad knees, hips, and more curly fries than are good for a person, hobbled off the deck and out of sight. The other couple exchanged pleasantries with us, and this sparked conversation. The couple—our age—were scientists: a professor of biology and a professor of chemistry. Immediately upon hearing this, my wife and I reacted with relief and admiration. “So you’re believers!” My wife blurted.
The couple laughed. “Yes,” said the woman. “We happen to believe in science.”
Inevitably, the conversation turned political. We expressed mutual consternation over our country’s political inability to address the biggest crisis of civilization: the most rapid climate change in history. (The chemist said he was so incensed by the nonsense of You Know Who, in this regard, he wrote a book satirizing You Know Who, called [You Know Who’s] Unauthorized Alphabet Book for Adults. You can buy it on Amazon.)
If my wife and I are very concerned about climate change, the scientists are ever more worried. This isn’t a good thing—to be a Titanic passenger anxious about icebergs but less so than the nautical engineers aboard.
They mentioned the searing heat and devasting drought out West. This prompted my wife to cite a disturbing fact revealed in The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben: moisture in the Midwest depends on western coastal forests. The biologist had read the book also and was well-acquainted with the science. I told her she mustn’t retire from teaching.
As we drove along the back roads, lined by thick woods, through lake country, I wondered how long all of this would appear as it has during my lifetime.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
