"There's a meadow I can't stop coming back to" - Carl Phillips


There's a place I can't stop coming back to. A short walk from the house where I grew up there's an opening in a fence just off the street. I've walked down these broken stairs, this wooded path to the Mississippi River more times than I can remember. I've photographed every inch of this path and this beach; I've explored the places you can't see from the path. I call this place White Sand Beach, but it's more than that. It's solace, it's my city, it's part of home.


I did a lot of growing on this beach. I grew taller, I formed new opinions and reexamined old ones, my heart contracted and expanded. A boy broke my heart for the first time on this beach. I argued politics with peers outside of my social group. I made and lost friends. Despite the beauty, both physical and emotional, of this place, the memories and the meaning, there's brokenness here, too. In high school this was a social gathering place, a place away from parents and roofs and police. I remember watching boys paint graffiti on the cement wall in the sand and being angry with them for ruining a part of this place I held sacred. I saw fights; I saw blood stain the sand. I wondered why everyone couldn't show this place the respect and love that I tried to. Now, I see things differently. The graffiti, the remnants of bonfires and fireworks, the flying fists and the subsequent apologies, this is part of our connection to this place. Maybe it's an immature expression, a childish way of loving this land, but there's always room to grow. Maybe we all just love things in the best way we know how.

Now when I visit the beach, things are different. I'm no longer a part of the parties, but instead I visit the beach during the day with friends to picnic and play cards, or alone to write and reflect. I've seen and loved this beach in every season. Visiting it now in winter, snow covers the sand and the graffiti-covered cement. Seeing a scrap of paper sticking out of the snow or the end of a loaf of bread I no longer feel loss but instead can't help but feel connected to the people who love this place like I do. I realize that these bits of human residue mark the fact that others have visited this place, have loved here and lost here. The river has always informed and bordered my life and I imagine it always will. It's broken, but it's beautiful. I face the river head-on and momentarily forget that I can't swim in its polluted waters, or kneel to its bank to take a drink. I simply listen for water moving under ice. I remind myself that what can't be seen is worth examining. One day soon the ice will have melted back into the river and the rush of water will be visible again. Seasons change on the river like they do in cities. What is covered will reveal itself.

After all these years, I have come to love wildness in all its forms. I have come to seek it in the city, and to expect its presence in my daily life. After reading William Cronon's well-known article, I have been able to name this feeling. I believe we must learn to acknowledge and nourish what is wild and liminal in our home; we must allow it to flow in and out of our hearts every day. It is a form of wildness to love something with your whole heart. To love something entirely is to exist on the borders. Minneapolis is a city rich with wildness—I see it in the river, on this beach, but also in my city's people, in our love for our city and in our communities, both spontaneous and planned. We love deeply in this city; the wildness of love lurks in every corner. As a community, we must continue to cultivate and embrace all of the ways this wildness can improve not only the relationship between ourselves and the land we live on, but also our relationships with one another. We must seek and cherish the liminal spaces that exist in our lives. Consider this my covenant with the city – I will fill my days with the pursuit of wildness.

-Caitlin Thompson