Issue 28: Winter/Spring 2025 / Introduction

Introduction to Issue 28 | Mississippi River Open School

A view across the Mississippi at Wyalusing, Wisconsin. Image by Dave Hoefler, via Unsplash.

By Laurie Moberg, Editor

In the current moment, I find myself struggling with seemingly endless uncertainties. Environmental, political, social, and personal conditions create a charged sense of precarity and anxiety, like sharp rocks poking through smooth water of a river, scratching at my foot as I cross or catching my paddle as I try to stay afloat. And I suspect I’m not alone.

Amid this turbulence, I’m looking for “glimmers”—the small moments that give me hope, joy, calmness, and connection.[1] From laughing with a friend to seeing sprouts grow from seeds, from reading with my child to observing the seasonal changes of the local landscape, glimmers keep me grounded so that I can face each tumult.

This issue of Open Rivers offers glimmers in abundance. The articles in this, our first-ever double issue, focus on the Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange, a project that engaged participants along the Mississippi River’s entire length around place-based practices and the challenges of the Anthropocene. The projects shared here demonstrate not only a commitment to enduring social and ecological relationships but also give strategies we, as readers, can apply to foster our own well-being and connections to people and place.

The provocations and practices within this issue I carry with me as glimmers, like sunshine sparkling off the burbling waters of a stream as it runs its course over rocks and shifting riverbeds. As you explore the content of this issue, I invite you, too, to find your own practices of connection and your own glimmers of joy, hope, and courage.

Footnote

[1] Deb Dana coined the term “glimmers” to describe a set of positive reactions that counterbalance triggers, our reactions to negative stimuli that inspire our fight-or-flight responses. Deb Dana, Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).

Recommended Citation

Moberg, Laurie. 2025. “Introduction to Issue 28 | Mississippi River Open School.” Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community, no. 28. https://doi.org/10.24926/2471190X.12512.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/2471190X.12512

FORTHCOMING Download PDF of Introduction to Issue 28 | Mississippi River Open School by Laurie Moberg.