Hutterite Sojourn

Summer 1969

There is a man on the moon, thousands of young people are swarming to Woodstock, and thousands more are protesting the war in Vietnam. I'm in central Montana, documenting the lives of a pacifist religious group, the Hutterites, who live in a colony called Surprise Creek. Their lives are far different from mine, and probably yours. And yet this Hutterite assignment will result in a friendship that lasts my lifetime. I'm a young man, married, and the father of four children—two sons, two daughters, all about a year apart in age. Scott, our firstborn, is nine.

Fall 2004

We're not going to the moon now, there's a new war on, and the joke about Woodstock is that if you remember being there, you probably weren't. I'm no longer young, and I have another marriage and another son. Scott is 44 now and beginning to die, but we don't know that yet. At least we try not to think about it.