Paterson, Wash. • Fifty-mile-per-hour winds and snow drifts seven feet deep greeted Ted Wishon when he checked on his cattle herd, hunkered down on a hillside along the northern bank of the Columbia River.
With his 21-year-old son, George, Wishon labored through six weeks of brutal weather this year keeping hundreds of animals alive. The two men — living in a spartan trailer on leased land pinned between a winery and the icy waterway — repaired fences, delivered calves and kept the herd fed and watered.
As spring approached, the snow melted and the winds grew slack.