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I met Cal DeWitt, the environmentalist, some years ago at a conference on world population. He was expounding eloquently on the need for living in harmony with God's creation when I asked him, in an offhand way, whether he had seen any place that would serve as a model.

My question was not, I admit, entirely innocent. In my experience, environmentalists can be very clear on what aspects of modern life they are against, but when asked what kind of society they admire, they may refer to the way Native Americans once lived on the land, or to some remote tribe in Central Africa. I am looking for an environmental vision that applies to modern America, suburbs and cities and all.

So DeWitt's answer surprised me. "Yes," he said cheerfully, "Dunn, Wisconsin."

"Dunn? Where's that?" I asked, suspecting a commune in the northern woods that raised organic vegetables for the farmer's market.

"Just south of Madison," he told me. "It's my town."

Dunn, the un-town
I visited Dunn in late spring last year. Leaving the freeway behind me, I took a meandering road through Wisconsin farm country, cornfields covering easygoing hills patched with black and brown oak woods. I was looking for a town to appear, but it never did. The first thing I learned about the town of Dunn, Wisconsin, is that it's not a town. In Wisconsin, the place where you find stores and schools and inevitable taverns—what I call a town—is a village. A town in Wisconsin is a subset of the county, a square of open country six miles on a side.

That doesn't imply, however, that there is no "there" to Dunn. At one time few residents thought much about the locale. They lived in the country "just south of Madison." That has changed quite dramatically over the 25 years since DeWitt came to live there. Now the 4,000 citizens say proudly what town they live in. They note the difference (perhaps not so visible to others) when they cross over the town line into other towns. DeWitt says that one of the most notable developments of recent years is the expansion of the town cemetery, previously overgrown and almost forgotten. People in Dunn feel they belong to the place and plan to plant their bones there.

Eyes to see
Calvin DeWitt is a wetlands ecologist who teaches in the University of Wisconsin's interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies. He's also director for the Au Sable Institute, a Christian study center in the Michigan woods that offers summer field courses for Christian college students. He is a formidable scholar, recognized by the university as one of its best teachers. Ron Sider says he is "Mr. Evangelical" regarding the environment—the person with the scholarly credentials, the outspoken faith, the long track record.

What he is best at, though, is field trips. He has a way of taking students into the most ordinary landscapes and showing them a creation they hadn't seen. He is good at explaining complex features of the terrain and its living creatures, and he conveys a sense of wondering joy as he does it. DeWitt sees the world as a scientist and as a Christian, and he puts remarkably little space between those two. He is committed to preserving nature, but it isn't humanity against nature for him. Rather, he sees nature serving humanity by offering testimony to the glory of God.

It is one thing to proclaim God's glory on field trips. It is quite another in the vexed and politicized subject of land-use planning. Dunn's north boundary runs a mere stone's throw from Madison, a city that is spreading fast into the dairy, corn, and soybean farmland all around. When the DeWitts bought their home in 1972, the familiar process of turning farmland to suburb was well under way. Small subdivisions and five-acre "farmettes" were spreading across the landscape. Farmers whose children showed no interest in farming could foresee selling out to home builders for a bundle.

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June 15 1998, Vol. 42, No. 7