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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 [...]
Out here we pretty much ignore the TV weather forecasts. They aren’t accurate more than half the time, so we’d do as well flipping a coin.
It’s not that meteorologists in these parts are poorly trained or that our weather is particularly tricky. They’re just demographically handicapped. They forecast weather for their primary viewing audience, the [...]
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 © 1996. All rights reserved.
Many old-timers came of age in the seat of an Allis-Chalmers, a Farmall or even a Poppin’ Johhny. Wisconsin folk historian Jerry Apps’ first tractor was a homemade contraption sculpted from the remains of old trucks, spare parts and down-home know-how.
Apps was only eight years old at [...]
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 © 2009. All rights reserved.
This was another one of those bone-chilling mornings.
The thermometer dropped below zero again and the windows were all frosted with ice around the edges where winter tries to ease its way inside. Only the woodpile and baseboard electric, it seems, are holding back an ice age.
Outside, the [...]
by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved.
It hasn’t been all that many years since horses were the primary mode of transportation all across the West. They not only pulled buggies and wagons, and sleighs in the winter, but they also powered the plows and cultivators that tamed an arid land.
Les Broadie remembered well [...]
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