Discuss: Out West

Yes, we need to tell the old stories honestly and together compose new, more wholesome ones.

It is by stories that we live and die, that lead us to desecrate the earth and each other - and then allow us to rationalize the desecration. And it will be only by new, more honest stories that we might again learn to live well.

Mr. Wilkins, this is a fine piece of writing, in my estimation. I have to tell you though, this reads less like an essay on geographic trauma and much more like a litany of bad decisions made under the influence.  If I’m out of line by saying this, please forgive me, but you sound like a very decent, feeling, person: If you haven’t made that phone call, or had somebody make it for you, I’d tell you to do it before it is too late for you and your family. If you have, good for you. Thanks for your writing.

This is a great article. Life is what happens when you are making other plans. I wish more could experience the blood, guts, and wildness that Mr. Wilkins describes. If one can come out the other side a thinking feeling individual, he is a more complete person for it.

Great story of the west.  It’s interesting that the way you lived, off the land, growing your own food is the model that is now being proposed to use and yet you honestly describe how difficult it is to do. Modern ag and is being lumped together with industrial factory farming and we may be all forced out of business.  There are areas where the land is good and life is sweet and grandpas still want their grandsons to grow up and be cowboys. I met a Russian man in the import business who said they don’t raise their own beef because they’d lost the tradition or heritage.  I suppose you’d call it institutional memory or coporate knowlege in business school,but farmers and ranchers are born not taught.  Our culture should not be lost either.

We have mean drunks too.  My fear is becoming a high maintenance woman and looking “downright biblical”. 

Thanks for a thought provoking article and a good laugh!  Need to go find my antiaging sunscreen…

This story reminds me of many Wyoming short stories by Annie Proulx. I’m from Nevada. There is nothing harder, lonelier or purer than a life lived by pulling yourself up by your boot straps. Such is the creed of the hard west. But failure to do so often bares what isn’t so pure - an insecure, raw and vicious weakness - and that happens everywhere, not just in the big empty.

Incredible. Orion is a saving grace. Both the magazine and its writers have taken on a seldom attempted job - storytelling of bare-bone honesty that gives us unparalleled insight into the state of our society, environment and world. Cheers!

Thank you: to Joe Wilkins for writing such a fine essay, and to Orion, for finally publishing something gritty and - dare I say? - perhaps a bit dark. A step beyond the norm for you folks, I’d say.

I appreciate this essay tremendously, both as a Montanan and a professor of environmental writing. Nice work, Joe.

Yes, this is the hard Montana I remember too: barhopping in Red Lodge, trucking to Harlowton in a blizzard, how my uncle lost the family sheep ranch, four generations old, in a divorce settlement.  Joe, you are a fine writer with important stories to tell.  I hope to see a book from you soon.