Green Options

Imagine that: Walking through a network of trails from our Wissahickon Farms Country Inn, a rustic private cabin nestled in the woods, to grab dinner in town more than a mile away where the restaurant, Indian Creek Orchard Winery and Grille, features mostly local ingredients to prepare their Elk burgers and homemade sauces and soups. We started our hike on the 98-mile Gandy Dancer State Recreational Trail which passes through an edge of the 30-acre Country Inn property, a property certified by Travel Green Wisconsin.

Given the bears in the area, my son and I had quite the adventure: he made a “bear stick” to defend ourselves on the rare chance we might encounter one. After dinner, we wandered down to Overlook Park, featuring the River Spirit sculpture, before continuing along the riverfront on yet another trail to the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway Visitors Center – spotting a bald eagle soaring overhead along the way.  Ecopreneurial enterprises filled up many of the storefronts we peaked into downtown.

Getting around town without touching a car is completely possible in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, rightfully earning its moniker, “the city of trails.” While some places aspire to be something they’re clearly not, nor ever have been, St. Croix Falls is a place that features what they have in abundance: their network of walking, jogging, biking and hiking trails – and nature.

In St. Croix Falls’ historic downtown area, you can park the car and spend the rest of the time on foot or bike as you discover a segment of the 1,000-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail or the more than 10 miles of hiking trails in the Interstate State Park. Thanks to the spectacular St. Croix River, stunning coulees and “dalles” (ancient rock outcroppings), the community has emerged from its extractive history as a logging town and fur trading post to one of the premier places in the Midwest for the enjoyment of the outdoors, on foot, bike or in a kayak on the river.

According to Richard Florida in his latest book, Who’s Your City?, the average American moves every seven years. “More than 40 million people relocate each year; 15 million make significant moves of more than 50 or 100 miles,” writes Florida. That’s a lot of carboard boxes, time and energy.

The implications for such a footloose society is further complicated by a staggering statistic: a roughly 50 percent divorce rate nationally, leading to multiple homes for what was once a single family home. Of course, second home ownership was also on the rise before the financial meltdown, increasing by 22 percent between 1995 and 2005, according to the Harvard University’s Joint Center on Housing Studies. Now we have two (or more) homes (to fill with stuff) only to later sell them, on average, every seven years.

Then when we age, we’re left with the quagmire of what to do with all our accumulated stuff. The solution for many, of course, is to jam it into self-storage lockers. Over the past two decades, self-storage has emerged as a $20 billion industry and comprises over 52,000 facilities, according to the Self Storage Association. In California, many people park their vehicles in their driveway or on the street not because of their famously great weather (no city snow removal), but because their garages are packed full of more stuff.

Florida points out that there are several key trends emerging:

You hear so much about people striving to live a greener, more sustainable life. You may at times wonder, who else is doing it, and is all that happy talk translating into real world results?

Three friends decided to find out. As they put it,

Mandy, Ryan and Brady are ‘bikepacking’ 12,000 miles to the East Coast and back to California, using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles. The result is a feature-length documentary film that will present [...]

The tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire claims to be the very first 100% sustainable island in the world. Located in the Netherlands Antilles, its waters have been protected since 1979 - making it one of the most pristine snorkeling and scuba diving spots that can be found.