She was burned out by 17 years in Washington, D.C., and by worldwide environmental activism. Each defeat hurt more. Her mentor at the Conservation Congress was dying. At an important meeting, she had lost control and shouted at someone whose organization had given the Conservation Congress millions of dollars.
Nelson had spent years doing things like monitoring the governments of the 155 nations who had signed the Kyoto Protocol, in which they promised to limit toxic emissions, and developing a model project to preserve 10% of the forests in Belize. She had worked on other major projects in Brazil and Bolivia.
After her shoreline walk, she had a beer in Madison with former Democratic Gov. Tony Earl, emptying more than the glass with her old friend. She also emptied her heart.
That conversation led to her being asked this: Would she want the $76,209-a-year job as executive secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands?
The oldest state agency, it manages 77,500 acres of forests, trust funds worth more than $600 million and land survey records going back to the 1830s. It makes loans to local governments and gives grants to public schools.
Fast-forward one year, to Nelson's corner office, hidden behind the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, in a downtown Madison state government building. Pictures of an owl and trees, and a personal note from Earl, are on the walls. She was hired by, and works for, her agency's three board members: Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, state Treasurer Jack Voight and Secretary of State Doug LaFollette.
"Here, I get to give away money and play in the woods," said Nelson, 49, whose hobbies include playing guitar and writing songs. "I'd love to keep my job for a very long time, because it really makes me happy.
"My personal life, having some work/life balance, and having a garden and having dinner in my own home . . . working on my music, being closer to my spiritual values - these are things that are important to me," added Nelson, who is single.
Her professional life has come full circle by returning to Wisconsin; she bought a home in the Madison suburb of Maple Bluff, near the governor's mansion where she lived from ages 2 to 6.
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle called her "one of the great leaders of the environmental movement in Wisconsin" who is "carrying on her father's legacy of land conservation."
"There are few things that I'm an expert on, but the personal sacrifice one makes as a public servant I know really well," Nelson said. "I'm not willing to make them.
Nelson's chief goal now is getting the Legislature and Doyle, a longtime family friend, to change state law to give the board more authority, so it could buy more land near forests it owns and to increase public access in other areas.
"We don't actually want to own more land," Nelson said. "We want to sell the stuff that's not productive, or isolated . . . and hard to manage, and consolidate larger blocks of working timber forests."
"Without (forests), that land will be subdivided, fragmented, the biodiversity will be lost, the watersheds will be diminished, the timber economy will be hurt, and it's all going to be 'second home' development," she warned.
The fight to protect northern Wisconsin forests "is something I am deeply passionate about - and if it's the only difference I make in my whole life, I will be gratified and die a happy woman," she added.
To do that, she's negotiating with Republicans such as Rep. Scott Jensen of the Town of Brookfield, who said he enjoys working with her. "She's very willing to try and find common ground," Jensen said.
Nelson said she was taught to work with your political opponents by "Papa." As a U.S. senator, her father worked with Washington leaders who were conducting the Vietnam War even as he tried to end it, she noted.
But it's complicated to fight these fights with dyslexia, a reading disability she struggled with all of her life but that wasn't diagnosed until she was in her 30s. She has learned what tasks - balancing her checkbook, for example - she cannot do and when "to give myself more time" to do things like slogging through talking points for a meeting.
With dyslexia, she said, "you develop compensatory strategies. I'm a very verbal person . . . It's not that I can't read, I just read very slowly. My strategy is: Identify the smartest person in the room who has an expertise in what I need to know, and sit next to him and ask a lot of questions."
Conservation Congress officials also recalled her ability to build political bridges, noting the worldwide trips she organized for members of the House and Senate from both parties that built support for environmental projects.
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