- The following program is a PBS Wisconsin Original Production.

- Coming up on Wisconsin Life: [shimmery music] We visit a kubb championship in Eau Claire.

[clomp] - Yay!

- A group taking on the trails to support mental health, a cutting-edge fashion school, and an author's home turned tourist hotspot.

That's all ahead on Wisconsin Life!

- Child: Here, Rascal!

[uplifting guitars, strings, piano, and drums] - Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided by the Wooden Nickel Fund, Mary and Lowell Peterson, the A.C.V.

and Mary Elston Family, the Obrodovich Family Foundation, the Stanley J. Cottrill Fund, Alliant Energy, UW Health, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

- Hello and welcome to Wisconsin Life!

I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald.

We're venturing out with Pringle Nature Center, a non-profit dedicated to putting people in touch with nature.

Housed within Bristol Woods County Park, the center is surrounded by forest, wetland, and prairie.

Indoors, the facility offers interactive ways to discover, learn, and engage with the natural world.

There are a variety of programs offered here: some focused on environmental education, while others are geared towards getting families outdoors and having fun.

Like Mud Day, [slosh] an annual event welcoming kids to jump into mud pits, [splat, slosh] run through the sprinkler, and play games.

- Man: Look at that!

- The Homeschool Science programs allow kids and their families to get hands-on learning experiences year-round.

All honoring the center's namesake, the Pringle Family, who were dedicated to growing and caring for the environment in Kenosha County.

Before I get too stuck in the mud here, let's dig into our first story.

[shimmery music] That brings us to Edgerton, where a famous author's home is now an international tourist destination.

♪ ♪ Angela: Edgerton is the kind of classic American small town where the past is very present.

It's seen in historic tobacco warehouses, the restored train station, and... here.

[door chimes ring] - John Stout: You are here for the tour, I presume?

- Man: Yes, we are.

- Angela: The Sterling North Home and Museum.

- John Foust: Sterling North is known as a Wisconsin author.

He grew up here in Edgerton.

He went on to become the literary page editor and book reviewer at big Chicago and New York newspapers.

But he also wrote almost three dozen books.

- One book sealed Sterling North's literary reputation: Rascal.

- John Stout: In the kitchen, we have Rascal with his sugar cubes.

- Rascal is the charming raccoon who became young Sterling's companion.

The mostly true story resonated with readers when published in 1963.

It went on to sell millions of copies and was made into a 1969 movie.

- John Foust: The people of Edgerton restored this childhood home as a museum because it's the setting of the book.

- John Foust has immersed himself in Sterling North's life and times for a book he's writing on the author and his raccoon pal.

- I think Sterling, when he wrote the book when he was 55 or so, he's looking back on his life.

He's thinking about the fun that he had as a kid.

And, you know, the subtitle for Rascal is "A Memoir of a Better Era."

- An era preserved in the North Home and Museum.

But an unexpected, more recent chapter to Rascal's story awaits visitors upstairs.

- From the Japanese... - Dozens of artifacts speak to the enormous following the little raccoon from Edgerton has in Japan.

- John Foust: He's just kind of a stand-in for cuteness.

- Visitor: Oh, it's a bobblehead.

- Angela: This Japanese version of Rascal is known across the island nation.

Over the years, the museum has amassed a collection of products brought back from visitors to Japan.

They range from dishware to toilet paper.

- John Foust: It's better known to people in Japan than it is people right here in Edgerton.

- Because after the book, after the movie, came the anime.

[cartoon children's voices singing in Japanese] - Child: Here, Rascal!

- Angela: The series Rascal the Raccoon delighted Japanese television viewers when it was first broadcast in 1977.

- John Foust: It did spectacularly well.

They had a 20% share of people watching TV on that Sunday night slot.

- The series would stay on the air for decades and gain a global following.

- Rascal has been translated to German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic.

[speaking in Japanese] - Angela: Giving the world a surprisingly accurate portrait of Wisconsin.

♪ ♪ - Foust: In the opening credits, Sterling is riding his bike with Rascal in the basket down to his favorite fishing spot.

And the name of the opening theme song is "To the Rock River."

The animators came here to Edgerton.

- Angela: The animators who traveled from Japan were later followed by tourists.

- John Foust: Japanese families do come here every summer.

- Visitor: They're big Rascal fans.

- Angela: For these super fans, a visit to the Sterling North home must be like entering their beloved anime.

- John Foust: It's a spooky experience to have watched and get a sense for a place, and then, to be able to visit it.

You can stand in the backyard and see the church steeple.

It's all still there.

And it was all what you learned about in the anime.

[speaking Japanese] - Angela: And John contends that Rascal viewers around the world have learned much, much more.

- John Foust: Tens of millions of kids around the world have watched it as their after-school cartoon for four decades now.

I think that the thing that Wisconsin is most known for around the world, beyond beer or cheese, it's a story about a raccoon, Rascal.

[happy cartoon melody] [shimmery music] - Next, we head to Green Bay, where a group of runners are taking to the trails for more than just a workout.

[gentle, serious instrumental] Angela: Ever felt the need for a break?

- Miss Smedemac: It's quiet.

There's nobody here.

[feet tapping forest floor] I can just be out here by myself in nature.

- A chance to step away.

- Relena Ribbons: There's something about connecting with the earth as I'm running over it that's pretty joyful.

- Regain your footing.

- Tommy Byrne: You feel free.

You feel relaxed.

You feel disconnected from, I would say, the busyness of just all the things in front of you every day.

- And realize that some things in life are just much bigger than we initially thought.

- Tommy Byrne: I think we live in a culture where it's, "Pull up your bootstraps, "and just get it done.

And life's hard."

And that whole narrative of "Be tough," and "The grittier, the more you go through, the stronger you are."

And I think it's a lie.

[chuckles] I think the strong people are the ones that are asking help and the friends that are standing by them to give that help or to point them in the right direction.

- Tommy Byrne knows what it means to deal with issues surrounding mental health.

It's a hard trail to navigate, especially when the person whose footsteps we're told to follow are lost themselves.

- Tommy: I lost a father to suicide when I was 18, and I compared my own mental health journey to his for the longest time, where "I wasn't that bad," is what I would always say.

And I realized I was white-knuckling it through a lot of situations when I didn't need to be.

And I remember vividly finally reaching a breaking point where I knew I needed support, and I knew I needed to ask for help, and I was scared.

- Tommy helped create Bigger Than The Trail, an organization that uses trail running as a platform to advocate for mental health.

- Tommy: Bigger Than The Trail came because my own mental health journey and my passion for trail running.

So, around the time that I found trail running, I took my own mental health serious and got diagnosed with bipolar and just, I really had a support system in my life with people, and family, and friends.

And I knew that some people didn't have that in their life.

And I wanted to find a way to make sure people felt supported.

- Through running, the group has helped over 500 people across the country with issues concerning mental health.

The goal is not to act as a substitute for therapy or medical attention, but to serve as a stepping point to get the help needed.

- Tommy: What we really advocate for for Bigger Than The Trail is, as positive as running is, we want to also build community and give people access to professional support so that if running was ever taken away from them, whether injury, or age, or anything, they have tools in their toolbox to continue to have healthy mental health dialogue and conversations.

- It's by building community that Bigger Than The Trail has created the most strides.

- Miss Smedemac: Being able to see the things that you struggle with in someone else and seeing, not only do they also struggle with it, but they also succeed.

And looking at someone else and saying, "Hey, you struggle with the same things that I do, "and you're out there, "just running an awesome life, "you're running your world, "and I can do that, too," and knowing that they're going to be there to support you and have your back is incredible.

[stream babbles briskly] - Angela: To determine success, you could point to the 1,500 months of free counseling the group has provided people.

An incredible feat.

But it's probably not the best way to measure their impact.

The best way is by asking this question: "What does Tommy Byrne mean to you?"

- Relena Ribbons: Tommy changed my life.

I don't know that I tell him that enough.

But I had some other traumatic life, like severe losses and real grief.

And Tommy's one of the few people who made me feel like it's going to be okay eventually.

Being able to know that I could reach out to folks and say, "Hey, I'm having a really hard time sleeping tonight.

"These things have happened and had cascading negative effects on my life."

But they really helped me to see that it's not going to be forever.

- Miss Smedemac: Tommy means a lot to me.

Tommy is a guy who I can reach out to any time and say, "Hey, I need a hand.

"I just need somebody to cheerlead me.

I need somebody to hear me."

He's the guy I could reach out to and say, "Hey, I'm really anxious about this, "and I just need somebody to hype me up and tell me it's going to be okay."

We don't have to have this super connection to know that I can always reach out to him.

- Tommy: I'm not a person that wants it to be about me, but it's an important topic, and I think that as unique as I wish my story was, all of these people have been affected by mental health, whether it be their selves or through family or friends, and I think that is why this is important and why it matters and why it's worth continuing to fight and put the work in.

So, it does feel good, but it's more about the big picture than how I feel.

- Angela: There are several different trails in life; some dark, some are narrow, and some so overgrown we can barely tell what direction they're leading us.

[feet landing softly] It's through others we can start to find our bearings.

Light seeps in, the path widens, things thin out.

And we slowly become much bigger than the trail we're running on.

- Tommy: No matter what you're facing, you're bigger than that.

You're more than your diagnosis.

You're more than the endurance sport or race that you have in front of you.

You're bigger than whatever's in front of you.

♪ ♪ [shimmery music] I'm at Pringle Nature Center in Bristol Woods County Park, immersing myself in the programs offered here while learning about the great outdoors.

With hands-on activities, nature-based events, and accessible wheelchair availability, this nature center has something for everyone.

- Elizabeth Alvey: We have year-round programming at the nature center.

We do a lot of different educational and recreational activities and events.

We have everything from field trips to homeschool programs, all different nature topics.

- So, I understand that here you have a combination of kind of more educational programming, but also fun things for families and youth to do.

So, on the educational side, what is one of your standout programs?

- I think one of our standout programs is our Homeschool Science program.

We do a different nature topic every meeting.

One of them that is, I guess, one of our favorites is the maple syrup hike.

We go out to Petrifying Springs Park, and we take the families up into the sugar bush in that park and look at the sugar maple trees.

And we talk about everything from how the trees make the sap, how we get the sap, and make the maple syrup.

And then, they can do taste tests for some of our maple syrup that we make on site.

- Angela: As a former homeschool kid, I appreciate that.

- Is it good?

- Child: Yeah.

- That sounds like a combination of both education and fun, honestly, to me.

- I think all of our programs are fun, but, yeah, it is very educational, too.

- I understand that we're going to be participating in Mud Day.

So, can you tell me about that?

- Sure, that is more on the fun side and less on the educational side.

Families bring their kids out, and we have some mud pits set up outside.

- Wow!

- And it is what it sounds like.

Kids jump in the mud.

[Angela laughs] Some of them get head-to-toe covered and become one with nature.

And other kids might like to play lawn games or blow bubbles instead.

But it's just a lot of fun seeing all the kids just doing what they're not supposed to do most of the year.

- So, literally, just a chance for kids to engage in nature, doing the messy things that they like doing anyway?

- Yes, exactly.

What are some of the feedback you're hearing from kids and families who are able to take part in your activities?

- We hear a lot of feedback that families just love being in the park, exploring the different habitats, visit the forest, the prairie, the pond.

We love getting to see them making new discoveries and meeting animals, seeing things they haven't seen before.

New discoveries to explore here at the Pringle Nature Center.

♪ ♪ [shimmery music] Now, we travel to Milwaukee to meet the founder of an emerging school crafting cutting-edge fashion.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ On the waterfront, in the trendy Historic Third Ward, the new face of fashion is emerging.

- Lynne Dixon-Speller: We don't have a job.

We have a passion.

To let them know that fashion is in Milwaukee.

- Lynne Dixon-Speller is helping lead that charge at the Edessa School of Fashion.

- Lynne Dixon-Speller: Two, four, six, eight, ten, and then, we're going to create a velvet rope and lace up the back around the buttons.

We have already shown in New York Fashion Week, Chicago Fashion Week.

We've been invited to show in Kenya and Paris this year.

♪ ♪ We've had our students' pictures on a billboard in Times Square.

That was amazing.

- Times Square!

- Hey, Edessa does it, baby!

- Angela: What's even more amazing... - Lynne: We've only been open a year and a half.

Edessa has been blessed with extremely talented first-year students.

♪ ♪ So, because of that, we have something to show and something to brag about.

- She's just a golden student of the class.

- The fashion school offers traditional garment design along with non-traditional ways to fabricate style.

- They are teaching shoe making, jewelry making, lingerie, children's wear, formal wear, bridal wear, swimwear, things that are outside of the realm of your typical fashion school.

You'll see the corsets that were made in this class.

The patterns are created to fit exactly one person and one person only.

- From corsets to haute couture, these fashion students learn to accessorize.

♪ ♪ - Lynne: Tonight, we're going to learn to implement chain into necklaces.

- As chair of the Edessa Design Department, Lynne sees hope in Milwaukee.

- Lynne: Look at these!

Is that gorgeous?

- Angela: Opportunity is all Lynne wanted when she decided to help form, construct, and pattern this school for success.

- Ah, now we're getting somewhere.

This has been the most difficult thing ever.

I had no idea what we signed up for, but I tell you what, we're not shrinking violets.

We're not running away.

We decorated the walls.

I painted the door.

I mean, it is personal.

- Personal in more ways than one because Edessa Meek Dixon, the namesake for the fashion school, was Lynne's grandmother.

♪ ♪ - Lynne: She graduated Tuskegee Institute in 1920.

Nonetheless, a young black woman...

I felt there needed to be something built to honor that bravery, that academic prowess.

- Spending time with Grandma Edessa is a memory stitched in time.

- My grandmother sat me down in summers when I would go to visit, and taught me how to sew.

She was paramount in making that happen and providing me with the career and the chutzpah to do this.

And I felt that I owed her to name the school after her.

And fortunately, the team that helped develop Edessa, they all agreed.

At the same time, I felt that Milwaukee kids needed to see something named after someone like themselves.

- Those kids now see themselves on the cutting edge of fashion.

♪ ♪ - It is like the World's Fair of Fashion for Milwaukee.

♪ ♪ - This is Milwaukee Fashion Week.

♪ ♪ It allows student designers to strut their stuff.

- Edessa has begun to develop a reputation for having a youthful, hip vibe.

But you know what we do?

We always have a 20-year-old in the room, and we listen to them.

- Just like Lynne listened to her grandmother when she offered this eternal piece of fashion advice.

- Lynne: Whatever it is, you don't know after you send it out into the world where it's going to end up.

But it's going to have your name on it, so it better be the best.

- Oh, it's reversible.

- Student: Yes.

- Okay, cool.

And I still tell my students that to this day.

I made a garment and let the garment go, sent it out into the world.

It ended up in the Smithsonian.

I've had another garment end up in Museum of Wisconsin Art.

This will do well for the gala.

- Those sewing lessons with Grandma became the fabric of Lynne's life as she keeps moving fashion forward.

- Lynne: It's almost as if everything we touch is telling the community we belong here, we have the right to be here, we are the best.

♪ ♪ [shimmery music] Our last story takes us to Eau Claire, where we're thrown into a national championship of kubb.

♪ ♪ [clunk] [cheering] ♪ ♪ - Announcer: You guys can start the playoffs now.

Super Smash Kubb against Jean Kubb Picard, pitch 20.

- Katie Stafford: And we are so excited to be here.

- Announcer: Kubbsicles against the Krusty Kubb, pitch 29.

- Mike Davids: It's exciting.

It's an electric atmosphere.

- Kubb Squirrels, Kubb Mudders, 51.

- Eric Anderson: This is the 17th annual U.S. National Kubb Championship, all held right here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

- Mike Davids: This is kubb at its finest.

144 teams from all across the country.

- Katie Stafford: So many different teams from so many different backgrounds, states, all around the country, all around the world.

- I'm Eric.

My name's Eric Anderson, and I'm the director of the U.S. National Kubb Championship.

Glad you're having fun, buddy.

- Man: Yeah.

- Eric: Kubb's an old Nordic game.

It comes from Sweden.

You throw these wooden batons or sticks, and you try to knock over these wooden blocks.

[clunk] There's a king in the middle.

As soon as you knock over the opponent's kubb, then you can hit the king, knock him over, and that's how you win the game.

It's a game of skill and strategy.

Some would say a little luck.

- Mike Davids: It's a culmination of cornhole, and chess, and horseshoes all at the same time.

- Drew Brandenburg: It is a yard game, but it's a pretty competitive game, especially out here.

I mean, there's some tremendous kubb players.

[clunk] - There it is.

Good job!

- Katie Stafford: We were researching lawn games.

We came across kubb, and my dad brought it up to my grandma's 103rd birthday.

We're all there playing kubb, and we decided we're great.

[screaming] - We got you!

Yeah!

- And so... [laughs] - And so, we should go to the national championship.

♪ ♪ - Yes!

We got it!

We got it!

- Minnesota, Wisconsin, like, that's the real kubb country.

And I think everybody would agree it's kind of Eau Claire, it's kind of like that... that's that heartbeat.

- Mike Davids: The scene here in Eau Claire has really set the standard for what kubb is.

This is the Mecca.

- Eric Anderson: I emailed the city manager.

I said, "Hey, I got some ideas about kubb."

He goes, "Come on in."

And I'm like, "Hey, like, I know this is kind of silly, but I'd like to have Eau Claire be the kubb capital of America.

Like, can we do that?"

And he looks at me, he's like, "No."

He goes, "How about North America?"

And I was like, "I like this!"

- Katie: What I love most about the kubb tournament so far, is how kind everybody has been.

It really is everybody out here having a good time, laughing, enjoying themselves, playing the game.

It's just family, friends, and enjoying life.

- Mike: We call this the family reunion for us.

Kind of personal story.

Like, I fought leukemia a couple years ago, and all the kubb community was like, "Hey, man, we're here for you."

It's community; it's family.

- Eric: I can't tell you how many people literally have told me, "Man, kubb changed my life."

"Kubb got me and my cousin to start talking.

We just play kubb and just have fun."

- Drew Brandenburg: Bottom line, it's the people.

Just the culture and community of people.

- Eric: There's something about the game.

It's organic, it's wood, it's grass.

It's a game of nature.

It's this interaction that I think, maybe it does help us be better people.

When people come here, they can feel kubb.

It's life.

[shimmery music] - My time playing in the mud here at the Pringle Nature Center has come to an end.

To learn more about the stories we've shared today, visit WisconsinLife.org.

And reach out to us via email at Stories@WisconsinLife.org.

Until next time, I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald, and this is our Wisconsin Life.

Stay muddy.

Bye.

[uplifting guitars, strings, piano, and drums] - Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided by the Wooden Nickel Fund, Mary and Lowell Peterson, the A.C.V.

and Mary Elston Family, the Obrodovich Family Foundation, the Stanley J. Cottrill Fund, Alliant Energy, UW Health, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.