Rural Delivery

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1989. All rights reserved.
Standing in a field just a few hundred yards from the place where he was born 70 years earlier on “a cold February morning,” the retiring rancher eyed the crowd gathered around his dismantled windmill.
An auctioneer cried out from the center of the throng, “Last chance! Two-twenty-five, [...]

by Michael Hofferber
Copyright © 1992. All rights reserved.
On a golden afternoon in early autumn I return to a mountain lake I’ve visited many times over the years, dating back to when I was a child at summer camp. Some sense of connectedness brings me back, time and again, to reacquaint myself with familiar waters and [...]

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1996. All rights reserved.
First, you start with a pumpkin seed, but not just any pumpkin. Seek out seeds of a Halloween or Jack-o’-Lantern or Spookie variety. You want a pumpkin that matures to the size and shape of your own head.
Sow your seed just before the last frost in mounds [...]

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved.

“Logs to Burn! Logs to Burn!”
“Everyone needs logs to burn!”
Hear the woodman sell his wares.
What trees they come from, no one cares.Ah! But here’s a word to make you wise,
When you hear the woodman’s cries.
Never heed his usual tale
That he has good logs for sale,
But read these [...]

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again, dancing a jig;
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog;
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog;
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Home again, home again, market is done.
~~ Mother Goose

To [...]

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1997. All rights reserved.

These are the dog days of summer, a time of year when creeks run dry, the air stands still and the sun beats down relentlessly, day after day, or so it seems.
These are the days when we rediscover shade, pools, and the contents of our freezers. Cooling [...]

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1993. All rights reserved.

I’m standing here in a bare-walled room contemplating a stack of cardboard boxes and wondering which contains the notes to the water rights article I’m working on. And I’m asking myself again why this is happening. What possessed me to box up my belongings, scramble whatever order [...]

by Michael Hofferber, Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.

“Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” Ecclesiastes 7
The pines and aspen stands look black in the half-light of dawn. A thick white frost blankets the windshield. My truck’s V-8 is reluctant to turn over; it [...]

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1992. All rights reserved.
I’ve been clearing away calendars and planting new ones. It’s like digging up the gnarly vines and withered roots of last year’s growth. I turn the pages of days gone past, tilling a bed for new year’s sowing.
Days and months and [...]

So much has changed in the past few years, economically and socially and technologically, that almost everything we once took for granted and assumed would always be the same has been utterly transformed and made unrecognizable.
Rotary dial telephones. The milk man.The price of gas.

Isn’t there a speed limit on change? Hasn’t some law of physics [...]