Andrew Norman, a master’s student in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, is the editor of EJ. Contact him at namronwerdna@gmail.com

Before the trip, I’d go to the local park after a big rain and spy earthworms in the beam of my flashlight. I’d drop to the mud on my knees, grab the worms with my fingers and wiggle them out of their holes. Each dozen was worth a dollar to Maynard.

His skin was a leathery red, and his eyes were kind and patient. He’d tell me dirty jokes and I’d call out "here, fishy, fishy, fishy.” We trolled the lake all day with lines extended, hoping to catch the prickly finned walleye on those worms. His job was to catch the food for that evening’s fish fry. Mine was to retrieve the snakebite medicine from his tackle box when he’d shout, "Ouch! Ouch! Oh, they’re biting me again!”

Even then I knew the medicine was just a bottle of whiskey.

Maynard passed more than 15 years ago, and my father inherited much of his fishing equipment, including his ice-fishing sled. This winter I visited him for a few days. On one particularly cold afternoon, he took me ice fishing. We drove his pickup to the edge of a frozen irrigation lake.

The ice was still forming and boomed under our boots like steel chords plucked by God’s fingers as we pulled the old white sled about 100 feet out onto the ice to meet his friend Gary, who was sitting alone in a small hut. Gary had held a funeral for his father, who everyone called Hooter, the day before, and was unusually quiet as he slowly bobbed two lines up and down through small holes in the ice, their jigs bouncing off the lake’s bottom.

Like Maynard did for my father, and my father did for me, Hooter taught his son how to fish. He was 92 when he died, but was ornery to the end — witnessed when his son tried to get him to wear hearing aids.

"I don’t need no doggone hearing aids,” Hooter grumbled cantankerously.

"They’re not for you, Dad, they’re for me,” Gary said.

Hooter’s legs had gone, but his mind was strong. And when Gary would urge him to take the senior center’s HandiBus to run errands, Hooter would reply, "That’s for old people.”

My father and I set up our rigs and dropped our lines through the ice. He said the fish would start biting right before sundown, and he was right. For about a half hour we pulled in one walleye or white bass after another. It didn’t matter that most were too small to keep — that’s not why we were there.

My toes numb even through insulated boots and two pairs of socks, I slid open the sled’s splintered lid and saw a half-bottle of peppermint schnapps lying at the bottom, along with decades worth of lead weights, hooks, line and white paint chips.

I screwed off the lid, which was tight with crusty, sticky residue, and noticed my father eying the bottle as I took a swig.

"Now don’t drink all of that,” he said, nervously. "That was grandpa’s bottle. I was saving it.”

I felt my stomach drop, but before I could apologize he said, "You know? I think he’d like this.”

I passed my father the old snakebite medicine. He took a drink, and passed it to Gary.

"To Maynard,” Gary said extending the bottle in front of him, "And to ‘Ol Hoot.”

Most of the memorable moments in my life have an outdoor setting. And my favorite times spent with the people I love have been forged through an association with nature. Last fall, after a day of walking a stream’s edge, I shared the light of a campfire with my future wife, and contrasted the immensity of the stars with the fleeting relevance of daily burdens.

Nature reminds us of our impermanence. And it puts things into perspective.

This issue of EJ marks 10 years of MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, which offers a place for students like myself to gain a better understanding of science while developing our unique writing styles. I came here to become a better investigative reporter, and a watchdog for nature. I assumed many others did the same. In gathering submissions for the editorial package on pages 8-9, I was struck at the broad range of careers Knight Center alumni hold.

Some advocate environment issues for nonprofits while others cover daily beats for newspapers. Some do online reporting while others handle public relations for major companies.

The face of journalism is changing, and even (or perhaps especially) mainstream media operations seem to have no idea what it will look like in five years. The Knight Center alumni offer valid advice in becoming versatile in many media, to better situate oneself to lead journalism into its new age.

We all care about the environment for different reasons, and will no doubt take different paths to protect it. Through projects like GreatLakesEcho.org (page 6), the Knight Center is making us the antithesis of stagnant.

Hopefully we are agile enough to stand confidently on shifting ground.

And we are nimble enough not to spill any medicine.