Joe Wilkins is the author of the memoir The Mountain and the Fathers and three books of poetry, most recently When We Were Birds. As part of a writing residency, he and his family spent the summer and fall of 2015 living in an off-the-grid cabin in the Klamath Mountains of southwestern Oregon. They were prepared for ticks, poison oak, and black bears, but they didn’t realize how much they’d miss having a nearby ice-cream shop.