The task was simple: find a spot in nature to come back to each day and write. These were called “sit spots” and each student would choose their own space in the forest. The writing prompts would change, but their spot would remain the same.
The assignment is part of the Watershed Workshops course, an Honors seminar that includes a spring break trip to Itasca State Park. It’s co-taught by Kathryn Nuernberger, a creative writing professor, and Emily Schilling, a biology professor and associate director of Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories.
“Writers and scientists both have unique practices of paying attention, two different ways of knowing,” Kathryn Nuernberger said.
Itasca State Park is the home of the Mississippi River headwaters, which is a core focus of the course (”a watershed is a community of living beings held together by the water that flows through them,” the course description reads). The Mississippi River is an ever-present feature at the UMN Twin Cities campus. It can be spotted from classroom windows, crossed via the East Bank and West Bank bridge, and traveled via walking and biking paths. Its presence is easy to take for granted.
“Thinking about studying both writing and science through the lens of a watershed becomes a great opportunity to become more intimately related to the campus community and this broader ecosystem that holds and sustains us,” Nuernberger said.
Before students visited the headwaters of this great river, though, they would learn about the place they were staying. Itasca Station is part of the College of Biological Sciences and has been open since 1907, making it one of the oldest field stations in the country, located in Minnesota’s oldest state park.
Itasca Station is used for both research and educational programming for the U and the greater community (professor Nuernberger also teaches a “Writing the Wild” course over the summer). The station features 11 laboratories, seven of which are open year-round. Guests are invited to stay in cabins located on the 49-acre campus. For this trip, the students were split into three cabins for their stay, one of which would be the main hub for all shared meals.
After arriving at the park and settling into their cabins, the class met at the Biome Center for an orientation led by Jonathan Schilling, the director of the station. From there, Schilling led the students on a hike to Bear Paw Point. He’d periodically point out brown rot — one of his specialties — in the fallen trees along the path. Some of these stumps would become sit spots, but the most coveted spot was a lone patio chair facing the lake. Nearby was a structure made of tree branches and logs — “the Schilling project,” Jonathan explained (he and Emily Schilling created it during their restless Covid lockdown).
Senior Stella Mehlhoff chose a spot on a stump near the chair, facing the lake and surrounded by barren red and white pine trees.
“It’s really nice to have a private space with nature,” said Mehlhoff, an English major who is submitting the first 70 pages of her novel for her Honors thesis this spring. She took the class after enjoying a nature writing course the previous semester. She also inspired her friend, Greta Runyan, to take the course.
“I really like sitting in nature, absorbing what’s around,” Runyan said. Runyan’s a sophomore majoring in English and German; this was her first Honors seminar.
But English majors weren’t the only ones taking the seminar. The course included students from a wide range of disciplines including mathematics, finance, physics, and forestry.
Throughout their time in the park, the students got to learn more about Itasca and its inhabitants. They chose a bird specimen to write an ode for, learned about the politically fraught history of prescribed burns in the park, and discovered the various research projects happening at the station.
But the highlight was the trip to the headwaters. A roughly two-mile hike through melting snow and mud brought students to the origins of the Mississippi River (or, more specifically, what has been officially marked as the headwaters, despite some contention).
Strategically placed rocks allow for a path across the 18-foot wide, knee-deep water. After removing their backpacks, students began their slippery crossing. They watched three geese fight on the ice, two swans bathe themselves in the water, and debated whether a rodent on the lake was a beaver or a muskrat.
The next day students would have a chance to enter the water for the Bugs Below Zero research project. This community science project aims to expand understanding of the winter-active aquatic insects that are vital to trout survival.
Forming groups of three, the students set out to slowly walk along the river bank in search of midges, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies. They crawled through trees and brush, digging in dirt and examining fallen leaves for any sign of the insects. Donning waders, a few of them made their way into the river to collect samples from the water. It was Juna Krikava’s favorite part of the week.
“I really liked going in waders in the stream,” Krikava said. “I love wearing waders." Krikava, a first-year student majoring in forestry, appreciated the opportunity to spend their spring break in the park. “I like the outdoor aspect of creative writing,” Krikava said. “The setting inspires the writing.”
A stop at the visitor center was the final part of the trip, which was cut two days short due to an incoming winter storm. Students were given one more opportunity to write at their sit spots, soaking in the unseasonably warm day in March. Then they packed up their cabins and loaded up the vans for the trip home, following the flow of the Mississippi River back to campus. Though the trip was over, the writing would continue.
“I hope students come away with a new appreciation for different ways of paying attention to the world around them,” Nuernberger said. “Watersheds are a really beautiful way to think about ecosystems and understand different kinds of relationships. Water runs through us all.” –Aprill Emig