Danny Friedman was a climate storyteller featured during our Youth Convening Minnesota project at the convening in Warba, Minnesota. I talked a lot as a kid. If you know me, you might say that I still do. My mother told me that as a younger person, the only time I would stop talking was in […]
Johnette Ostlund, a freshman at Carlton High School, was a climate storyteller featured during our Youth Convening Minnesota project at the convening in Carlton, Minnesota in partnership with Youth Eco Solutions (YES!). Growing up, I’ve done a lot of mountain biking with my friends and family. Now, I’m actually part of the new CEC (Cloquet […]
Taylor Turman, a tenth grader at Northern Lights Community School and local beekeeper, was a climate storyteller featured during our Youth Convening Minnesota project at the convening in Warba, Minnesota. I grew up in Grand Rapids, my family having moved here when I was four. When I was in the second grade, my dad retired […]
As a youth I spent virtually all of my free time outdoors observing nature in the form of wandering the woodlands, fields, creeks, and ponds. I was fascinated with our natural world and constantly observed creatures such as frogs, turtles, snakes, salamanders, birds, and other wildlife. Often I would catch them and bring them home. […]
Josh Proehl participated in our 2017–2018 Youth Convening Minnesota project as a storyteller at the New London-Spicer convening in collaboration with Youth Eco Solutions (YES!). SSQUAAAAAAK! (pterodactyl screech) That sound was the very first thing I was introduced to two years ago when I began staff training to be a camp counselor. I showed up […]
I have a deep love of the outdoors. My first job out of high school was a canoe guide in the Boundary Waters. It’s still one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. The money wasn’t great, but the real rewards came from being outside all summer, canoeing in the Boundary Waters with boy scouts. […]
Several people have asked in the last week what changes I have seen in my course of the planet over the past century. I remark on this as I sit on the banks of the Red River in the waning April days of winter in an unusually prolonged cold season. They inform me that the […]
Growing up in Minnesota, winter – for me – meant playing hockey. Walking to the local rink and skating with my friends on weeknights for maybe an hour or two. Saturdays and Sundays meant skating for four or five hours. All of this skating was done on outdoor ice in Cottage Grove. In 1972, we […]
Some miles past Logan’s Pass in Glacier National Park, I saw the most beautiful place I’ve ever witnessed. It was enchanting. Razor sharp peaks carved by the ice swooped down into deep U-shaped valleys. The trees blanketed the mountains and fought their way up the slopes, as high as they could, until they gave way […]
As shared at the 2017 National Adaptation Forum Opening Plenary It took me awhile to recognize that as a youth my voice is important and should contribute to mobilizing change. Even now I often struggle with that and find myself constantly frustrated with how youth voices are not being valued or involved in different spaces. […]