The Official Website of Robert Slatt
July 2004 The drive back to West Virginia was quiet in a way it had never been before. Usually our road trips were lively—music blasting from the stereo as we cycled through The Best of the Guess Who, The Best of Bread, and Bob Seger’s Greatest Hits. Seger was always the most fun. His songs…
April 2004 – July 2004 When I moved up to the farm, two things stood out right away. The first was the absence of the trees in front of the farmhouse. One had been a pine, the other an oak. They’d stood there for as long as I could remember, providing shade to the porch…
April 2004 – August 2004 By mid-spring the weather had softened, and I liked to think I carried some of that South Carolina warmth with me. One of the first things I did was transfer my license and registration to West Virginia so I could vote in the upcoming primary election. Normally, I procrastinated on…
Late February 2004 The farmhouse smelled like kerosene from the space heaters. Cold wind slipped through cracks in the walls, and even though the thermostat never dropped below freezing, it often hovered in the 40s, sometimes dipping into the 30s at night. My whole body carried the scent of drywall and sawdust. We stayed warm…
December 2003 – February 2004 If we ever needed a sense of urgency to get the farmhouse habitable, it was facing down a cold West Virginia winter. Especially when winter meant living in a 5th wheel. There was no warning when the propane ran out—no sound, no sputter—just the creeping chill that spread like a…
Spring of 2003 was a whirlwind. Life felt split between two worlds: Spartanburg and the farm in Four States. I didn’t see it at the time, but that year marked the beginning of a slow, inevitable shift in where I belonged. The Cold Drive North I drove up to the farm for spring break in…
Spring 2003 Phone rings. I pick up.“Bob! What’s an alpaca?” No hello. No context. Just a blunt question, dropped like a brick into my Saturday morning. The voice on the other end was my brother Chris—confused, irritated, and sounding like he thought I’d failed him as a sibling. “I don’t know,” I said. “Why?” “Mom…
October 2002 – June 2003 The hills of West Virginia were awash in the warm tones of autumn—burnt orange, rusted red, golden yellow. The air was crisp, the kind that wakes you up and makes you reach for a jacket. The farm was quiet, peaceful, and the house—though livable for the moment—looked like it hadn’t…
October 2002 – March 2004 I began to take frequent trips to West Virginia after my parents moved to the farm. At first, the trips were just to visit them—for holidays and breaks from classes and work—but over time, the meaning of those visits changed. As I started helping my dad more on the farm,…
I used to tell people I went to the farm to visit my parents. That was true—but it wasn’t the whole truth. I was just as eager to see the animals. The farm, after all, didn’t just smell like animals and feed—it smelled like home. And home wasn’t home without them. They were more than…