Emily Brisse

When I was younger, I used to believe that out of everyone I knew, I was the only one who not only appreciated nature, but loved  it, pined for it, understood it as a perfect part of life. I talked to the trees. Yes, I was one of those .  I could spend hours by myself in the woods, or by a stream, or watching the light shift across the surface of a lake. My first memory is of a mountain landscape in Montana, the feeling of the wind rushing up my legs, the blueness of the sky. I began this blog for several reasons, but it was naive to not count among them connection with other "place people." I didn't know. I didn't even guess that fifteen months from its inception, this blog would have introduced me to complete strangers who now feel like friends, and friends who are now ever-more-deeply that because we've had cause to discuss and share about things that before just somehow never came up. I didn't know that what I'd most appreciate a year later about thi...

In the morning we drive. It's hot and sticky, something I mind only in a vague way--it's just the world working--but because it's my husband beside me, and as he's reminded me a thousand times, he can't take his skin off, we have the air conditioner on, the windows up, the changing landscapes passing us by in glimpses and sun-soaked blurry scenes. We're smiling, singing old high school songs. Neither of us have spent time in southeast Minnesota before. It's always been southwest-leading roads, beckoning northeast shores, that deep central heart of the state dotted with lakes. But we keep hearing about the Root River Valley . For some reason, there's a pull, so we've fueled the car, packed crisp apples, and now follow lines on a map. First, we pass through farm country that looks no different than the central and western plots we've known our whole lives. There are new names, though: Hampton, Cannon Falls, Zumbrota, Pine Island. We ask each othe...

I could say I had a hard time selecting my final Thirty Before Thirty "set in Minnesota" book. I could talk about John Hassler or Patricia Hampl or Carol Bly. I could write a very cerebral review, I suppose--you know, go out with some literary chops. But I'm a sucker for kids books. Minnesota's Hidden Alphabet  came out in late 2010 to much fanfare, and it's been reviewed in multiple places , so the only thing I can really add to this conversation is another dose of love. Photographer Joe Rossi traveled the wild corners of the state in search of letters etched in the landscape, in the bodies of trout lilies, in the ears of cottontail rabbits. David LaRochelle's text matches up with the photos in clever ways ("Overhead or on the ground, Peeking, sneaking all around, Quietly these letters lie, Ready for your roving eye.") and adds in fun facts (There's a wildflower called butter-and-eggs . Who knew?). It's a book you could read in three mi...

The Big Woods. In the early 1800s, pre-settlement, huge stretches of Minnesota were covered in dense elm, basswood, sugar maple, and oak stands. When the French explorers came here, they noticed that these trees were taller and larger than those in many of the other forests they'd traveled through, so bois grand , they said. Big woods. Big, beautiful woods, I said, as I walked along the extensive trails at Lake Rebecca Park Reserve , just outside of Delano. My mother and I had met there for a picnic: chicken salad and crackers, a green apple, fresh-picked strawberries, and cold water. As we explored the quiet beach, the busy playground, and the shady walkways, I thought about those early-1800s years and how Minnesota looked then. One of my childhood dreams was to be an explorer, to walk over land few had seen. Although the many acres that make up Lake Rebecca Park were discovered long ago, ambling through it gave me a bit of that experience, because--what is  up ahead of that be...

What do you say to an island?  Hello. Hello, there.   I came to say... Yes? Just hello, I guess. Hello. And what is it like and how does it feel and what are the sounds and smells and tastes of being here so always, so all-year-everyday, so long? It is like... Yes? This. When I canoe across the wide water, when I slide into the bay, along its shore, I pay attention. I notice muskrats and blackbirds, fish flopping, and wind. I think about its name-- Loon --and its location-- south --and I wonder at the way it was when those northern birds were here enough to leave their name. How much changes on an island like this? No houses, no campers, no impervious surfaces. Just green and brown and blue and green and green and green and green. What is it like to be so set apart? To have children watch you every summer of their lives, curious and wise? And then for them to go away, sometimes for long stretches of time, only to come back older and quieter and less brave? Does the isla...

And yes, they taste as good as they look. Yaaaow!

I have several "favorite places on earth" that range in location from gardens in Germany to cliffs in Hawaii to some crazy peacock ranch in Lubock, Texas, but one that is closer to home is Lake Sagatagan. Apart from its beauty, it's one of the only lakes I know (outside of The Boundary Waters) that has both a no development and no motor policy. There are a few St. John's University buildings, including the chapel, but other than that, the lake is surrounded by light and dark greens: maple, oak, birch, elm, pine, lily pad, bulrush, water iris. The water is a perfect cold, a perfect clear. And canoes are king. Two weekends ago, I went canoe fishing on Sagatagan with my Dad-o. It was an overcast day, but that made the sunnies easier to see, and I've always loved being choosey with the fate of my worms. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven -- up they came, energetic and yellow-bellied and big enough to eat, and I wondered aloud why I'd let a year pass since ...

Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks  of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake . Is it any wonder that with childhood books like these I've developed a proclivity for place-centered literature? Over Memorial Day weekend, my mother accompanied me to Walnut Grove in southwestern Minnesota for a very specific purpose: to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum . I would have gone with no one but her. She read all the Little House  books to me when I was a child, and some of my most vivid memories from my single-digit years are a concoction of her voice, the inevitable (if imagined) winds off the prairie, the quilt my mother and I were often cozied under, and Laura's flapping bonnet. To say I loved these books is an understatement. They were one of my earliest experiences of living vicariously through the lives of others, of traveling through words. The museum itself is not much--lots of books and souvenirs and several replicated late-180...

For the uninitiated, prairies call to mind only a few colors: green, yellow, brown--or some mix of the three. In actuality, though, the myriad wildflowers found amid the grasses and on their edges are multi-hued and brilliant, deserving of all the second-looks they inspire. Say hello to the wild columbine. My mother and I guessed honeysuckle first, as its little bell-flowers hang similiarly and smell just as sweet. But later we were corrected, and happily so. I would have hated to miss out on details like this: boiled, it can be used for hair wash; and crushed, its seeds can be rubbed on palms as love potion. Why not? You'd certainly smell delightful. The wild columbine is my fifth Thirty Before Thirty plant, and I must say I've adored this part of my list. I've paid so much more attention this spring, reallyreally slowed down and looked and examined and sniffed and listened. List or not, blog or not, I think I've found a hobby I will enjoy for...

"When you pray with this pipe, you pray for and with everything." -- Black Elk   I can promise you one thing: when my brother and I, as children, careened around the Pipestone National Monument 's Circle Trail ( through prairie, over rocks, up cliffs, down ledges, through prairie ), we were not thinking about prayer. And we certainly didn’t whisper. The sacredness of the place never crossed our minds. Our parents were from Pipestone, the small southwestern Minnesota town where the monument resides, and the park seemed as much our backyard playground as it had once been theirs. Besides, we were eight and five, and it was just cool to climb stuff. But when I was older—twelve, maybe—I was given my first pair of dangling, red pipestone earrings, carved into the shape of leaves, and later—at fifteen?—I received a small ceremonial pipe. There were conversations surrounding these gifts, explanations of how the pipestone was quarried from the earth, how it had been ...

One way to spend a Saturday morning: Drive west until the rolling hills of Wright and Carver County flatten out, until every other turn left or right off the highway would be onto gravel, until the thought w hy not fills you up, flows into your fingers, convinces you to take the next turn. Stop the car. Step out. Feel the wet mud coating your shoes, the dew still heavy on the long grasses. Go meet those hulks of friends that smile back sleepily,  that are grateful to have survived the winter, too.  Discover that they are wrapped in thin wire.  That they are much taller than you'd imagined, from behind your window inside your car on the highway. Place your hands on them.  You are trespassing. But they are complicit, and say nothing to discourage you. Sing something .

I love the way Gustavus Adolphus College lives on top of a hill. I love its river valley, its view of the fog that lifts off the moving water in the morning, its wide skies. I love the highest pane of the highest window on the highest floor of Old Main, especially at dusk. I love its crab apple trees. I love its open lawns. I love its sidewalks. And even more than these, I love the friendships I formed as I strolled those sidewalks, reclined on those lawns, studied under those trees, stared out from that window, and hiked up and down that hill toward or away from that valley the four years I was a student there. Gustavus gave me an education, yes. But it also gave me friends who are as bright and assured and open as flowers. We see each other less now than we did then, but when we reunite, it is always always spring. Some of them joined me for a picnic last night among the thousands of tulips that are up at the Arb . Don't get me wrong: I can point out a tulip . Almost every Min...

Here is one of my sixty before sixty goals: to have someone name a flowering plant Foremily. When I was two I would have been drawn to forsythia. Always, always, always I have loved effusions of blossoms. They transport me somewhere magical, and it's an especially potent trip here in Minnesota because these colorful displays come off of months of white. But I've never known it's name. Never known anything about it except for it's beauty. Now I know these things: this variety is called the Northern Sun, it was introduced by the U of M specifically for colder climate cultivation in 1982, and it's thriving here now, in spite of those 30' nights. Also, I know that someday I will plant one or ten of these in my yard, and herald its spring blooms with my whole heart.

Here's the truth: I hardly know what to write here, or for that matter really want to write anything, because I am simply so satisfied with the walk I just had. Wildflowers! Nothing against the Snowdrops . They were all about hope, which I desperately needed the day I found them in the Arb, but today there was color everywhere. Yes, still a lot of brown. But also SO MUCH GREEN. So many little plants pushing up up up up up up up. And when I came across these purplely-blue bells and white-blue stars carpeting whole stretches of earth, I literally gasped. That is how much of a nut I am. The Siberian Squill and Striped Squill made my day. They are number two on my Thirty Before Thirty list, and I love them. They remind me of eyelashes. That is all.