Remembering Michael Cotter

As Trish and I are driving west, we spend a night in Austin, Minnesota.  I immediately began to remember my good friend and fellow storyteller, Michael Cotter, who lived and farmed his life just west of here.  I can’t stop thinking about him.

 I first met Michael Cotter more than thirty years ago when we were both telling stories at the National Storytelling Festival. I immediately fell in love with his stories and in a short time also fell in love with the man.  He was a giant ordinary human.

Michael’s great grandmother (whom he described as a pipe smoker) brought her family from Ireland to Minnesota during the potato family.  Her son, Michael’s grandfather, turned the unbroken sod of the Minnesota plains with a team of oxen and established the farm that Michael’s son, Tom, still runs today.

Michael spent his life on that farm, a time which saw farming move from horse power to tractor power, a change that modified everything.  His stories were about animals, people, and the land they both inhabited. He told us about how if you take care of the land the land will take care of you.

Michael had something to tell stories about: life as he had experienced it.  His stories were gentle and hard, just like life well lived.  They were a microcosm of the larger sweep of American rural history painted across the middle of the 20th century.  Listening to him was listening to truth, listening to reality.

I shared stages with Michael for more than twenty years, always with respect.  I miss him.

Michael had, at age 86, worked on the farm the day he had the stroke that soon ended his life.  He left this world on July 31, 2017.  

When Trish and I spent the night in his home town, we were blessed to have memories of this dear man wrap around us.