The Kickapoo River Valley is one of Wisconsin’s most beloved landscapes. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with author Tamara Dean about this magical region and the miraculous, disastrous, and difficult changes she observed while living on the land. Her new book, Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless, is a collection of essays about what she learned from moving to this area in the early 2000s.

When she and her partner purchased a farm in the Driftless, she had many goals: of becoming an organic farmer, creating a pollinator habitat, and building a plastic-free home. Along the way, she was met with many surprises, from the tornadoes that destroyed 40 acres of the nearby forest to the floods that ravaged the region. Dean joined in the work of cleanup and collaborated on the Stories from the Flood oral history project that helped the community process that traumatic experience. 

Dean shares what it was like to uncover the history of people who were buried on her land. She devotes one essay to the story of Nancy Ann Harris who died from an abortion at a time before abortion care was banned in the state. She also discusses the significance of groundnuts, a staple of food for the Ho Chunk people, which she found in abundance in the area. 

Tamara Dean has been camping, fishing, hiking, and gathering wild foods from an early age, led and inspired by her parents. Her essays and stories have been published in The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, and The Progressive, and she is author of The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles over Motors. She teaches writing independently and through writing centers across the nation.

Featured image: cover of Shelter and Storm.

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