“Leash your dog, Wilke.” The phone message was innocuous enough. The only problem being I didn’t know the man’s name or phone number, and five minutes earlier he’d threatened to kill my dog. Our first encounter was last spring. I walked my dog, Ricky, through the block of condo subdivisions west of my home, as […]
Joanne Wilke
Posted inWotr
The burbling air show of migrating snow geese
I was visiting Choteau, Mont., with my friend, Bill, when a cheery checkout clerk said, “I bet you’re here for the geese.” Our blank looks confirmed our out-of-towner status. “Snow geese,” she said. “They’re migrating north again now.” She told us how plump Arctic birds gather by the thousands in the wheat fields near her […]
Posted inWotr
A devotee of a new kind of retail therapy
My daughter and I found the perfect sofa on the way to school today. It was just the size and color I was looking to add to the living room. Unfortunately, someone had dumped it upside down in the mud of my neighbor’s front yard. Apparently it took too much energy to have a garage […]
Posted inWotr
The old ways sink into the earth
The farm equipment graveyard — a row of horse-drawn plows and mowers overgrown with prairie grass — is a common sight at the edge of rural fields in the West. Collapsing hay wagons, disemboweled tractor hulls and other antique machinery sinking into the earth tell a story of farming, past and future. Each item was […]
Posted inWotr
Stopping by apples in the land of condos
My chicken-filled backyard in Bozeman, Mont., butts up against a square block of condominiums. The green fence between us is like a Berlin wall, separating noisy, itinerant college kids from our more stable neighborhood of families. It separates the mostly paved, over-parked, garbage-strewn and under-aged drinking zone that police call “Bourbon Street” from our homes. […]
Posted inWotr
Solace among the Crazies
I’ve always gone to the woods to calm or rejuvenate a spirit too easily rubbed raw by modern life. It shouldn’t have surprised me that this continued into chemotherapy. Cockeyed from surgery and early treatments for ovarian cancer, I thought I was too tired or too sick to feel alive in the woods, but found […]
Posted inWotr
Bring on the chickens
There is nothing funnier than a hen running. She clucks so seriously, leaning so far forward, wings spread out, moving that wide load on quick, skinny legs. I know chickens are getting trendy these days, but the main reason I keep yard chickens is for the laughs. My daughter was a colicky baby, and for […]
Posted inWotr
A tribute to a lifetime of frugality
My great-aunt Marie never had garbage to throw out. She spent her last 20 years cleaning out the barn, garage, basement and various assorted farm sheds, dispersing the wire, wood, nails, fishing poles, antique radios, and a lifetime of other valuables her husband had stockpiled. Well into her 90s, she bought groceries in bulk and […]
Posted inWotr
Fear and rage in the barn
I was in the middle of a divorce when I applied for the barn job. I walked into the local rodeo arena, introduced myself to the owner and was attacked by a rooster — claws up. My automatic response was to kick the bird across the barn, too late remembering this was a job interview […]