Why “Mud”?

Why would you name your company “Mud”?!

As soon as I thought of the name “Mud Enviro” for my business, I knew it was right, even though my business coach was . . . skeptical. Having “mud” in the name highlights and honors three aspects of my work and identity:

First, I’ve worked with actual mud for the past 30 years. My grad school training, and my research career after that, have focused on sediments at the bottoms of lakes - that is, mud. Core samples of lake mud can tell us a ton of different things about the environments of the past, like what kinds of plants grew in and around the lake, what the climate was like, the frequency of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and how humans have massively changed the environment. Mud Enviro brings this extensive core experience to support projects that are led by Tribes and support their goals.

Second, one of the many lakes called “Mud” (the most common lake name in Minnesota and Wisconsin!) is very close to my heart. This Mud Lake is on the Fond du Lac Reservation, and is called Mashkiigwaagamaag in Ojibwemowin. It had been a great wild rice (manoomin) lake in the past, but this incredibly important plant had disappeared from its waters, in spite of the Band’s efforts to restore it. In 2010 we took some cores there with Fond du Lac resource managers and students, and while sampling the cores we found dense layers of wild rice seeds right below the surface of the mud. Years later, my friend and colleague Tom Howes, the Band’s wild rice manager, told me how those seeds had stuck in his mind, and how around the same time he would hear old-timers talking about how they used to help wild rice to grow by dragging a box-spring around lakes with a boat. He said that the fourth or fifth time he heard them say that, he finally put those two things together - and his team dragged a modified vegetation cutting tool around Mud Lake with their airboat, stirring up the seed bank that was waiting in the mud. The next spring, the lake was green with baby wild rice plants - and it’s back to being an excellent rice lake ever since. I’m proud of the small part I played in this story of restoration that needed both Indigenous knowledge and Western science.

Lastly, the meanings of my weird surname, “Myrbo,” in Norwegian and Swedish have to do with mud - “myr” like “mire” and “bø,” “to live.” So “Myrbo” might mean “living by the swamp,” or it might mean “mud hut.” (It might also mean “anthill,” since “myra” is “ant” - but that’s more sandy than muddy.) 

And “Mud Enviro” often makes people smile or laugh (especially people who know me), so I know it’s a good name.