Gary Atwood, local coordinator of a biomass energy feasibility study through Dovetail Partners, an environmental research group, has had many interesting experiences that have led him from the oil industry to renewable energy. From barista and bookseller to graphic designer to biomass backer, Gary’s life in Cook County has enabled him to use many of his talents.
How does one go from conducting applied research in the “dirty, nasty, stinky business” of oil in Tulsa, Oklahoma to championing clean, renewable energy in the form of biomass in Cook County, Minnesota? Gary Atwood’s career has taken him around a few bends, and it is a journey with a theme that has taken him to his current position with Dovetail Partners, a nonprofit environmental research agency, as coordinator of a study initiated by the Cook County Local Energy Project (CCLEP) to determine the feasibility of developing biomass energy sources in Cook County. Over coffee at the Java Moose, he told the Cook County News- Herald where he has been along the way.
Gary started out with a degree from Western Illinois University in geology and industrial technology education. He and his wife Mary Ann, a former teacher now working for the U.S. Forest Service, are both from Chicago and moved together to Tulsa. When the price of oil went down, Gary’s job with a division of Dow Chemical that made cement infrastructure for oil wells was eliminated. He landed job in the Twin Cities as supervisor of technical publications for Liquipack, a company that made packaging machines and packaging products for a range of liquids from oil to milk.
Once they were in Minnesota, Gary and Mary Ann felt drawn to the North Shore, buying a house here in 1992 and moving up a year later. Gary said there was just something about coming over the hill into Grand Marais and seeing what looked like a quaint little fishing village.
It’s a real town,” he said, not just a tourist destination, a town where people really do log and fish for a living.
What does Gary like about Cook County? “What we like about it is different than when we first came up here,” he said. He used to enjoy places where he could get milk, wash his clothes, and get a tan all at once. He misses Leng’s Fountain. He is happy to see trendy new places like Sivertson Gallery.
For many people, living in Grand Marais before retirement offers the challenge of finding creative ways to make living. This has given Gary and Mary Ann the opportunity to do a variety of things about which they used to say, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” They owned and operated Waltzing Bear Booksellers and Coffee Brewers for a couple of years. Gary produced North House Folk School catalogues. He was Lonnie Dupre’s office manager during his first Greenland expedition and worked with Lonnie on the book he wrote about the experience. For five years he was a graphic designer for the Cook County News-Herald.
Does Gary miss his golden days in the oil industry? Besides being a “dirty, nasty, stinky business,” he said, it’s dangerous and ultimately “degrades the environment in some fashion.” He had enough of it.
The idea of an alternative is very appealing,” he said. He is now very attracted to self-sufficiency and sustainability.” Cook County, with only one paved road into and out of it, is isolated, and self-sufficiency makes sense to him.
That’s what makes Gary such a good fit as coordinator of the biomass feasibility study funded by Cook County, with more funding anticipated through Minnesota’s Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR). LCCMR has recommended that the state legislature award a grant for a regionwide study with the City of Ely on the economic and environmental impact of biomass industries in this area. The request from Cook County and Ely, which is part of a larger bill, made it through the House, the Senate, and the conference committee, however, it was vetoed by the governor.
Gary’s current contract with Dovetail goes through 2011 but could be extended if Dovetail is eventually awarded the grant. While he is working on this project, he would like to get a broader picture of what aspects of biomass energy the people of Cook County might be interested in – job creation, environmental stewardship, independence from foreign oil? “Cook County is by no means typical of Minnesota,” Gary said. It has a very educated population, he said, with the largest percentage of college graduates in the state. “There’s an independent spirit,” he said, “a willingness to try something new and different.” A significant percentage of the population lives here part of the year and shoulders a lot of the property tax burden but does not earn a living here. People who have lived here all their lives are concerned with how they can continue to make a living here. They depend on the prosperity of the county to make a living.
The concept of biomass energy in Cook County presents an opportunity for what Gary calls a clash of cultures to work together. Biomass is plentiful enough in Cook County to provide significant amounts of heat and energy without depleting the forest floor of the nutrients it needs to stay healthy, Gary said. He envisions CCLEP helping the county utilize a combination of local renewable resources to create electricity that could be delivered through the existing electrical grid.
Gary is good at trying new things. A few years ago, he and Mary Ann, Jay and Tamara Anderson, and Adam and Emily Moe created the Flying Leap Players, an improv group. Adam found an agent and they performed as far away as Cal Tech. Gary used to do a lot of cross-country skiing and crewed on the Hjordis for two summers. In 2003, he and Mary Ann fulfilled their lifelong dream of going to England, returning each year ever since. “We’ve …developed a real fascination with history,” Gary said. “There’s no end to the things you could end up pursuing.” He is impressed with how much open space England still has even though it’s been heavily populated for centuries. While it doesn’t have the amount of wilderness land we have here in America, the island nation has been able to feed itself and sustainably manage its land, something Americans and Cook County residents are becoming increasingly invested in.
Gary is no longer doing all of the things he once did in Cook County. “We’ve become very boring people,” he said. This writer thinks he’s wrong.
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