I had many questions for Anna Farro Henderson, an author who is embarking on a book tour that will stop at both the Two Harbors and Grand Marais Public Libraries and Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais. But we began by chatting about the end of fall sports. Henderson, a mother of two sons, aged 11 and 14, has become an enthusiastic cross-country fan through their involvement.
“I had no idea how fun cross-country meets are,” Henderson said. “At the finish line, after my kid goes by, I’m still standing there just clapping. It feels really exciting, and you feel so connected to everybody there.”
Connection is a recurring theme for Henderson. In her upcoming book, Core Samples: A Climate Scientist’s Experiments in Politics and Motherhood, she connects personal experiences with scientific expeditions, policy work, and the challenges of new motherhood.
“My hope for the book was to really bring people into science and bring people into politics,” she said. “The way people talk about science and the way I first learned it is so incredibly different from my experience. I really wanted to show how relatable and human science is.”
She described science and fieldwork as something muddy, sweaty, and with gritty, long hours that are hard to get through sometimes. Her first big field expedition was on the Juneau Icefield. She lived on glaciers for two months, skiing with cargo on her back. She had never skied before.
Science, according to Henderson, “was nothing like the facts and equations and worksheets that I had done in classes. It was so much messier. When people talk about science it can often sound distant or abstract or hard to relate to because most of what we hear about are these outcomes. We miss all of the messy parts, the doing of the science is full of humans and they’re complicated and they’re messy and things get messed up. There’s a lot of really good stories that get lost.”
One really good, and pretty terrifying story she recounts in the book is when she had to design a boat to take core samples from a lake above the tree line. It had to be light enough to carry, yet sturdy enough to pull samples when in the water. When she got out on the lake, it started to lightning. Henderson was holding a long metal pole in the water – essentially a lightning rod!
“Telling that story and sharing it is a way to explore the experience more,” Henderson said, discussing how it sparks questions, such as what they would do in that circumstance. “Part of doing things that are hard is making it fun by joking around or telling stories.”
Henderson lived to tell the tale and admitted that when she has done job interviews since that time, she often answers questions by giving examples of how she has handled stressful situations in the past. It requires attention to detail and what Henderson called a “habit of observation, asking questions, and visually thinking.” All good qualities in a potential member of any kind of staff.
After she became pregnant, she left fieldwork and was hired to be on Al Franken’s staff during his time in the Senate. It was quite a shift, but Henderson found a lot of strength in her background. She went on to work for Governor Mark Dayton as his water advisor.
“I went from doing science research to working in the U.S. Senate for Al Franken,” she recalled. “I didn’t realize how technical policy work could be.”
She helped to write memos and speeches for the politician and assisted in designing policies. She advised that she found the experience made her more empathetic and flexible to appreciate a broader range of things that go into policymaking.
“Everything was full of chemistry, physics, and math. I felt like science was a superpower,” Henderson said. “With each issue that came up there was a need for me to be realistic. When I went into politics, I thought it would be a clear right and wrong and I’d be arguing for the right. It was really that there are tradeoffs and there are a lot of different concerns. So, needing to understand and appreciate the other concerns that are out there. When something might seem logical if you are just looking at the science, there may be economic or geographic or housing issues that make it not possible to do.”
She added, “One of the things that was maybe not what I expected but was really exciting was nothing was a foregone conclusion in either Al Franken’s office or Governor Mark Dayton’s office. It wasn’t like Al Franken is a progressive who is a strong proponent for climate action so therefore we’ll do x. I did feel like as a scientist that everybody was fully aware of the information and that we weren’t forgetting it even if the decision was not made based on that information.”
Shifting from fieldwork to politics and motherhood was quite a change for Henderson. “For a long time, I had been planning on being an academic scientist,” she said. “There is a culture to it, and I didn’t really know how to wear suits and go into the Senate. It was a bizarre transition.”
Motherhood didn’t increase her concern for climate change—it shifted her relationship with time. “People talk about caring for the planet for future generations. I already felt that. But becoming a mom made me realize how limited my time was. Before, everything felt like a dress rehearsal. I was in grad school, not making money, and unsure where it would lead. But it felt like I had time because I was young.”
When the need came to pump milk at the state Capitol, Henderson began writing a “Lactation Diary,” which chronicled her experiences in the Senate. “It was the process. The incredible amount of information and new experiences, being new to working in the Senate and being new to politics and having a baby. Every day I would go pump and I was writing,” she said.
In working in the Senate, she began spending a lot of time indoors and admitted to getting pretty antsy. However, Henderson relied on her past experience and ability to appreciate the beauty in her new surroundings.
“The extreme environment for doing science fieldwork, there’s something about that where you are in a real faraway place and there is no help you can call for. It’s really beautiful physically, the natural landscape, and there’s something about that that makes you feel really alive, and purposeful, and excited to be alive. I think it’s wanting to feel that kind of connection to what I’m doing and the landscape and being aware of the natural beauty has been really important for carrying me through,” she recalled.
When thinking of the beauty around her in the halls of the Capitol, many would look to the artwork and architecture. As a scientist, Henderson started wondering about the plants in the designs that decorated the walls.
“Plants were like a language that you could read to reconstruct or understand current climate or reconstruct past climates. Every plant has a range of how cold of a winter it can deal with, how hot of a summer, how much drought, how much rain. So, when you have a collection of plants, the Venn diagram of how they overlap tells you about what the ecosystem was.”
When Henderson began feeling burnt out, she started focusing on determining the species and biomes of the plants around her. She contacted the historical society to ask if they had a list of the species that adorned the walls and was advised, “They’re just stencils.”
They weren’t just stencils to Henderson. She noticed the floors had different color palettes and dominant plant species.
“The state Capitol is three stacked distinctive biomes that tell the story of who we are as Minnesotans,” she said. “Every plant has an ecological story, but it also has an art history story and what it has represented through time and how it is represented in architecture. The story that is told in the plants, it has kind of been missed, and it’s really beautiful.”
Henderson offered to give me a tour next time I visit the Capitol, but in the meantime, she is on tour promoting Core Samples, which will be released on October 22, 2024.
She will be at the Two Harbors Public Library on November 8 at 1 p.m. for an author talk featuring simple interactive art projects.
“All the projects are around the theme of reflecting on our relationship to nature,” she said. “It’s giving people some time and space to think about what’s beautiful and meaningful to them.”
On Saturday, November 9, she will offer a 1.5-hour writing class at 10:30 a.m. at the Grand Marais Public Library, followed by an author reading at Drury Lane Books at 6 p.m. All events are open to the public.
Pre-orders of Anna Farro Henderson’s book are available at annafarrohenderson.com.
