Extracts from an explorer’s diary
“There are ginseng farms in this remote corner of Wisconsin where phones are answered in Mandarin.” — Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post
“(Marathon County) is located about two hours west of Green Bay on U.S. Highway 10 and there isn’t much there.” — Philip Wegmann, Washington Examiner
Journal entry, April 29, 2018:
On the twenty-ninth day, we reached Wausau. Our supplies were badly depleted; we had lost several dogs. The crew members were sick of hardtack and their grumbling about our provisions had taken on a mutinous tone. I eyed them uneasily and tried not to fall asleep with my back to anyone.
I had been sent by the esteemed editor Mr. J — to this remote corner of Wisconsin in search of a story neither of us knew for sure existed.
“Your dispatches will be a window into a world few have ever seen,” Mr. J — told me through a haze of cigar smoke. “Our readers rely on you to be their eyes and ears, to relate to them the sad reality of a land unknown to the civilized world, the hard truths of its deprivation and isolation.”
He pointed an ash-stained finger at a map, showing the center of Wisconsin. A wild country. Ginseng country.
“Yours is a sacred responsibility,” he said. “I trust you are aware of the risks that come with such an assignment.”
He scarcely needed to mention that last, as the risks were all my mind could fix upon from the moment he had begun his discourse. And yet I knew I must go. I needed to tell the story of the ginseng growers in this far-remote outpost.
I assembled my team from rough taverns, millhouses and sawyers’ shops. The journey was hard. A scout by the name of Philip Wegmann had fashioned a crude map that I had copied by hand in Mr. J — ’s office. It advised us to travel east on a fur trader’s path known as “Highway 10” from the Bay of Green. When we arrived at the Bay (our harrowing sea journey contained such hardships as I cannot bear to remember, let alone describe) the residents, huddled in their yurts against the cold, told us “Highway 10” was a day’s journey south. Even if we reached it — unlikely, for bandits roamed these rural roads — it would not, in fact, lead us to the land of Wausau, which was too remote and cloistered to intersect with any such established path.
I wrote a letter to Mr. J — detailing our setback and put it in the post, knowing there was but a slim chance it would ever reach its intended audience. I did not, however, neglect to include some details on the strange customs and local color I observed. Perhaps it could be of some use to him.
Reader, I need not detail every hardship, every twist and turn our journey took. We forded streams and fought off bears. We sang raucous drinking songs as we made our way through the wilds, and at other times we fell silent, in awe of our own isolation.
In Wausau at last, I knew I had survived the journey because God had a purpose for me, which was to write about ginseng and how tariffs on the crop — on this unlikeliest crop, in this bizarre outpost — might affect the 2020 presidential race. And yet my purpose, dear reader, after having survived this journey, felt as remote as my setting.
The Starbucks was cramped and crowded; we took our provisions and promptly left, avoiding the locals’ stares. I remembered Mr. J — ’s entreaties about our sacred duty. So I bought the crew pizza slices at the Polito’s downtown and we all charged our phones. Then I took out my laptop, connected to the free wi-fi (primitively slow, by the way) and started to write.