Windbreak House

Welcome to Windbreak House.


In the center of the nation, deep in the grasslands of western South Dakota, essayist and poet Linda M. Hasselstrom grew up as an only child on a family cattle ranch homesteaded by a Swedish cobbler in 1899.


Today she invites you to benefit from a writing retreat on that same ranch. Come to the house where she discovered the Great Plains outside her windows, where she began to write the poetry and non-fiction books that have established her as one of the strongest voices on behalf of the prairie.


Linda holds a BA in English and Journalism, an MA in American Literature, and has been a teacher of writing for more than 45 years. She has hosted writing retreats at her ranch since 1996.


Not a writer but a reader? Enjoy Linda's vivid descriptions of her life and work on the ranch, as a writer, and as an advocate for the preservation of the prairies and the people and wildlife who inhabit them.

News:
In early February I returned from the Western Folklife Center's Cowboy Poetry Gathering-- my 11th visit there-- and am working on my own writing before the Writing Retreat season is upon us.

See the Retreats Page for the list of available retreat dates in 2015.

If you can't take a retreat holiday because your time or budget is tight, we can still have some writing fun together online. See the Online Writing Help Page for complete details on how to sign up for a Writing Conversation by eMail.

Though I've discontinued my Home Page Messages, I've set up a new WordPress blog (with the help of my web-wrangler) because it gives me more options than the blog on this website, including the ability to post more photos, the ability to link with social media across the web, and a subscription service that sends a dandy version of the blog directly to your email inbox. Try it out.


New blogs posted in February:

"Sunrise" -- posted February 6th
Read it on my WordPress blog.

"Cowboy Poetry Gathering" -- posted February 10th
Read it on my WordPress blog.

"Valentine's Day" -- posted February 13th
Read it on my WordPress blog.

"Thinking Is Writing: The Bathtub" -- posted February 20th
Read it on my WordPress blog.

"Clicking 'Like'"" -- posted February 24th
Read it on my WordPress blog.


You can also find these blogs on the Blog Page of this website by clicking here.

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Weather:
It has been unseasonably warm and dry, which makes heating the house, travel, and walking the dogs a pleasure but does not bode well for the grasslands unless we get a good spring blizzard or some steady rains in May. Wildfires are now a real possibility.

The stock pond below our house is completely thawed, and opportunistic Canada geese have been going north the past few days, though they may turn around if an Alberta Clipper sends cold wind this way. It won't be long before our resident ducks return to raise another group of young on the pond.

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Sports:
Ranch sporting events keep humans and animals alike in peak condition and break any monotony that may set in as we do the same work over and over. For example, my neighbors used to let their dog ride in the pickup to the far corner of the pasture, and then let him out-- and race him home!

Every day Jerry and I go out at noon with the dogs and circle the four spreading juniper bushes north of the house. The bushes are like hobbit houses, with arching entrances over dusty trails the rabbits make dashing in and out. Cosmo usually dives into the bush while Toby stays outside. And every day, a rabbit zings out from under a bush; we never know in advance which one it will be.

If the dogs happen to see the rabbit, one or both of them chases, and sometimes the rabbit keeps hopping until he reaches the Botanic Garden Headquarters a quarter-mile away. We crawl through the barb-wire fence and trot along behind the dogs, and wait while they sniff around the pile of logs waiting to become fence posts. Then we all stroll home.

Toby jumped a rabbit in the Writing Retreat yard the other day and went yipping after it-- followed by another rabbit, apparently confused about how these things work. Cosmo swung in behind the second rabbit and they all disappeared into the corral in a flurry of dust. Needless to say, when the dogs came panting back, they weren't carrying rabbits in their jaws.


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