Tread Lightly
By mapping Minnesota’s sustainable rural business-from vineyards to solar-powered mini-golf courses-Green Routes itineraries promote local eco-tourism
By Rachel Hutton
Photo by Dan Page (illustration)
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Minnesota’s rural sustainability movement has stayed hidden, in part, because the destinations haven’t been packaged to entice travelers. Few Twin Citians would drive all the way to Montevideo just to tour a turn-of-the-century print shop (A to Z Letterpress), but, if they could also watch waterfowl (at Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge), get a great cup of fair-trade coffee (at Java River Café), shop for handmade pottery (Tokheim Stoneware), and spend a night in a cottage with a live rooster for an alarm clock (Moonstone Farm), the trip may seem more attractive.
This past fall, Joannides and Olson loaded a bus with journalists, policy-makers, and community leaders to tour a few of the new Green Routes destinations along the Minnesota River Valley. Perhaps loaded isn’t quite the right word—the bus was about half full. The legislators in the group weren’t household names, neither were the two reporters. A newspaperman from India was aboard, but no one from the Twin Cities’ daily press.
The bus rolled past the wind-bent prairie grasses of Blue Earth County for a couple of hours before stopping at Morgan Creek Vineyards. If you ignored the corn stalks and the Northrup King and DeKalb signs, and perhaps squinted a bit, the hillside winery could have almost passed for Northern California.
Georg Marti and his wife, Paula, led the group around their farmstead, hiking past a faded red barn and rows of grape vines. Marti, a great-great-grandson of brewer August Schell, explained that Morgan Creek produced its first vintage in 1998 and now makes roughly 30,000 bottles a year, using 95 percent Minnesota-grown grapes. They keep their land healthy by applying organic pesticides and fungicides to the fruit, and have drawn up plans to install a solar-energy system.
The visitors sampled wines in the yeast-scented retail shop, one called Relativity, another Sweet Bliss. The wines don’t have the reputation of those made in Napa Valley, but you could get to Morgan Creek from Minneapolis, one guest noted, in the same amount of time it might take to get through security for a flight to California.
By the time the group returned to the Twin Cities, it had met some grass-fed cattle, stopped to look out over the Minnesota River, and toured an 1870s general store that still contained original pairs of bloomers and undelivered mail. The visitors had experienced some of the best of what the valley had to offer—the things that make it someplace—and left behind a minimal environmental impact.
With tourism making up 10 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, sustainable tourism could become an important tool for keeping rural economies alive, particularly as jobs in farming, mining, and forestry disappear. Chuck Lennon, spokesperson for the Minnesota Office of Tourism, says interest in green travel is growing, but still “embryonic,” and that Renewing the Countryside may have to be careful how it positions Green Routes so as not to offend the rest of the tourism industry. Of their tag line “authentic tourism,” Lennon chuckles, “Don’t spout that off at the tourism conference.” While there are many “gems” on the Green Routes, Lennon notes, there are some whose eco-ethic is less than apparent. “What the hell is this doing on here?” he asks of a seemingly non-descript fishing resort on one of the maps, “What do they do? Recycle their cans?”
The travel industry is still defining exactly what “responsible tourism” means. Not getting drunk? Making your own bed? The sophisticated travelers of this millennium—those who don’t like to think of themselves as fanny-pack-wearing, camera-toting tourists clogging up the world’s most popular attractions—demand the best of both worlds: guilt-free luxury. They want to have a local villager sell them a handmade rug—which they can unpack and admire back at their five-star hotel. Olson concedes that Green Routes travelers may have to adapt to the local culture, as visitors to Spain must plan around the daily siesta. “This isn’t Disney rural,” Olson says. “It’s real. It’s not for the extremely uptight traveler.”
Joannides and Olson don’t expect a mass exodus of shoppers from the Mall of America to the tiny organic-cotton clothing shop at Wildrose Farm in the Brainerd Lakes area. But, as interest grows in other states (Travel Green Wisconsin launched a pilot program last spring), they hope to take the website national over the next few years. It’s Olson’s dream, he says, that he might one day drive from the Twin Cities to, say Portland, relieving himself at compost toilets all along the way.
Rachel Hutton is associate editor of Minnesota Monthly.
