Paradise Valley, my husband often jokes, is heaven only for real estate agents. Opulent log “cabins” crowd the banks of the Yellowstone River, and working family ranches can be counted on fewer fingers every year. Yet these changes seem secondary to the common foundation of our lives: the rise and fall of the river, the […]
Andrea Peacock
Posted inWotr
Suffering and solace
“He died just like that. He didn’t suffer,” the woman said, speaking of a deceased pet. “Not like your cat.” I was stunned by her words: cruel, thoughtless and dead wrong. But she wasn’t the only one to make such a pronouncement. In the months my husband and I provided hospice for our tabby cat […]
Posted inWotr
A poisoned Montana town gets its shot at justice
I got goose bumps recently, when Judge Donald Molloy read the charges against W.R. Grace & Co. and five of its former executives in a Missoula courtroom. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. For the first time since 1999, when the news broke that hundreds of people had died from asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mined in […]
Posted inWotr
A corporation’s deadly legacy lives on
“It was a Superfund site,” my friend Nina told me, joking about a house she and her husband nearly bought in the crunched real estate market of the greater Yellowstone area. At first they loved the house and its affordable price. Then an inspector informed them that the building was full of asbestos-laden vermiculite from […]
Posted inWotr
There’s nothing like watching a grizzly bear in the wild
We heard them long before we saw them. My husband and I were watching a grizzly feeding on the slope across the drainage from us when weird howls drifted through the valley. The bear heard the strange sounds, too, and eased into the brush at the base of a berry patch. The noises came again, […]