 | This month I had the privilege of spending a week in Valton, Wisconsin — which, if there are any David Rhodes fans out there, you might better know as the unincorporated village that inspired the fictional town of "Words." Deep in the Driftless and surrounded by Amish farms, Valton is a don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it cluster of houses, two churches — one Wesleyan, one Quaker (where Rhodes' recent memorial service was held) — and a remarkable property called Ernest Hüpeden's Painted Forest. Rhodes had long been involved with — and met his wife, Edna, at — the Painted Forest, which had originally served as a meeting house for a secret society of woodmen who sold life insurance in the late-1800s using costumes and rituals. (I'll wait while you read that sentence again. I'll also fill in some blanks in a future issue of Madison Magazine, so keep an eye out for that.) Hüpeden, a German, alcoholic, self-taught folk artist vagabond who came to the U.S. in 1878, painted the floor-to-ceiling murals that give the building its name. The Kohler Foundation led a restoration effort in the 1980s, and Edgewood College now owns and maintains the property and its adjacent art studio and study center — which is how and where I was able to experience my first-ever writing residency. When I wasn't writing or wandering for miles, I found myself pondering trees — both those on the walls of the Painted Forest and the lush forests surrounding Valton.
I've been nurturing a newfound captivation with trees, and I don't think I'm the only one. I don't know if it started with Richard Powers' "The Overstory" — it might have, that book is brilliant — but I've been regularly adding tree-related titles to my library holds list and my bookstore shopping cart. Thanks to Arcadia Books' virtual monthly book club, I'm about to dive into July's selection, "The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape," which features an introduction by Ross Gay and the collected writings of 50 contributors including Powers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón and Zadie Smith. Another book group I belong to is reading "Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest" by Suzanne Simard, so I brought it with me to the Painted Forest. It's a fascinating first memoir from a pioneering forest ecologist who is helping us understand the complex, interdependent relationship between trees — social, cooperative creatures that communicate and care for each other — and fungi. (Wisconsin author Carol Dunbar's prizewinning debut novel, "The Net Beneath Us," is a partial nod to this phenomenon as well.) I spent hours thinking about how interconnected we are, and how little we understand, even still, the natural world around us. I also brought along Alison Townsend's "The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home," which was my Editor's Pick in last year's Best of Madison, because it's the kind of book you can return to when you want to luxuriate in good prose while pondering who and what we are, and why.
The Painted Forest is open for public tours most weekends beginning July 19 and running until Oct. 16. Inside, you can pick up a scroll that contains some history about the property, beautifully written by Rhodes himself.
Maggie Ginsberg is a senior editor at Madison Magazine and author of the novel, "Still True," which is the honorable mention selection for the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and a 2023 Midwest Book Awards silver medal honoree. She curates this monthly newsletter for Madison Magazine. Reach her at mginsberg@madisonmagazine.com. | | | |
