Melody Epperson "Voices From the Land"

This piece was inspired by a recorded conversation from the 1970s, in which my maternal grandparents spoke about one of the most formative chapters of their lives. As I remember it, the entire family gathered — my mother's siblings, my cousins, all of us sitting in a wide circle — while my grandparents described the moment they made the decision to leave their farm in southeastern Colorado during the Dust Bowl.

My grandfather and his brother's family made enormous sacrifices to escape the droughts and dust storms of the 1930s. They sold the family car, brought in wild horses to be broken and trained, and set out with two covered wagons — traveling from Springfield all the way to Guffey, a small mountain town above Cañon City.

I was lucky enough to inherit those recordings. I call them The Hill Tapes, named after my grandparents, Leslie and Florence Hill. One of the recordings is my mother, Laurie Gibb, reading aloud from my grandmother's diary.

The phone in front of you is a portal into that world. When you dial, the primary voice you'll hear is my grandmother Florence's — unhurried and unguarded, offering small, vivid moments from that time.

She remembers her garden before the dust came. She describes the storms themselves, the covered wagon, the long journey up through the canyon with the horses. Taken together, her stories open a window into something universal: the profound and lasting way that our environment shapes who we are, and what we are forced to leave behind.

To listen to the sound recordings, pick up the receiver and wait for the dial tone. Then punch in the seven-digit phone number listed in the directory.