Wisconsin Life

>> "He plunged in among the big Spruce trees, the trail was faint. A foot of snow had fallen since the..." >> At the Conserve School in Wisconsin's North Woods, this is a classroom. >> "In fact, he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in a handkerchief." When you go outside and you sit in the wind, and in the cold, and in the snow, you feel the story. >> This story is "To Build a Fire." A man alone in the wilderness struggles for survival. Jack London wrote it, based on his time in the Yukon. >> He lived the literature to create it. So, I want the students to live the literature to comprehend it. You can come and get warmer by the fire, if you'd like. We have a fire, unlike the man. >> Literature teacher Jeff Rennicke uses the story to teach a lesson about respecting the wild, taking responsibility for it, and for yourself. >> "Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots of worse ways to die." At the end he says, "It was my mistake." So, he's starting to take responsibility for his actions. All great literature is about transition. >> Jeff knows about transitions from his own story. >> A good story should have

an arc

a beginning and an end. >> The beginning for Jeff's story is a Kaukauna High School classroom and a teacher who encouraged the class to look out on the Fox River as he read them poetry. And he was reading a poem by Carl Sandburg that says "I know now it takes many, many years to write the river. A twist of water asking a question." And I heard that and my love of language and my love of nature came together. >> Love of nature and language led to magazine articles. >> Backpacker and Sierra and National Geographic. I traveled all over the world. >> Books, too, including one dedicated to that high school teacher. >> To be a great artist you need to make mistakes. >> But Jeff didn't imagine joining the profession. >> If you're not making a mistake, you're not trying hard enough. >> Then Conserve School invited him as an Earth Day speaker. >> Get out there and make mistakes. >> The headmaster was so impressed, he offered Jeff a job. >> One of the things that I really value is teaching through story. I think that when people can make a connection with a place, with a person, and feel it in their heart. And that's what I just felt, from day one, that Jeff had. >> Pretty much got that point? That it was cold. >> I just fell in love with the place, obviously. >> Deeply in love enough to give up his career as a traveling nature writer. >> I realized then that I was gaining a lot by traveling to all of these wild places, and it's a wonderful life, but I was also missing what's right under my nose. Wisconsin North Woods is as beautiful a place as there is on the planet. >> Capturing that beauty of his home has become his new passion. >> I couldn't write about traveling anymore because I wasn't traveling. So, in exchange for that, I picked up a camera. And the camera has become my new way to tell stories, my new way to develop a sense of place. >> So now, instead of traveling widely, Jeff and his camera are exploring deeply. >> A sense of place in the North Woods of Wisconsin and Lake Superior is like sinking down deep. >> When he traveled as a writer, Jeff didn't take the pictures. >> I was traveling with, literally, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers. >> But now his photographs are receiving prizes. This image was seen in a Smithsonian exhibit. It's a favorite spot of Jeff's, Honeymoon Rock in the Apostle Islands. >> I jumped out of the boat 'cause I knew the water was shallow right there 'cause I've been there so much, water up to my chest, set up my tripod,

camera shutter clicks

an arc

took a thirty-second exposure.

camera shutter clicks

an arc

We were out there at exactly the right moment for that picture. >> It's not traveling to some exotic place and going to a once-in-a-lifetime trip. It's a place I've been to, literally, hundreds of times. And I just happened to catch it at a magical moment. >> In Wisconsin's North Woods, it's not too hard to find something beautiful to photograph.

camera shutter clicks

an arc

>> Jeff Rennicke's Conserve School classes are learning what their teacher learned long ago. When a love of nature and a love of story come together, it can be a revelation. >> I'm telling the story of, "Open your eyes, look at what's around you, see the beauty right under you."

gentle wind blows against snow