UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
Borrow Equipment

MATL Makes Life in the Woods Easier to Manage

Posted on , by Shawna Hanson
A 50-foot wooden boat, gaily painted rusty red and white, floats on quite waters. A blueish, wooded island is in the distant background.

Dianne Winter and her husband discovered the Barnacle Belle dismantled on a beach, the hull gutted. They fixed her up and lived in her cabin, just six feet across, fishing for prawns in the channels off the British Columbia coast year after year, four harmonious months at a time. “It was a darling little boat and we had wonderful times,” Dianne recalls.

Now 81, Dianne maintains her preferred rustic, self-reliant lifestyle near Plains. “I live in a federal forest,” she explains. “I see bears. Sometimes a wolf. My best friend is a dog. I don’t want to be in town.”  Then life had to go intervene and Dianne found herself in need of help.

“My life has changed dramatically since I fell and broke my hip,” she observes. “Now I’m using a walker and sometimes a wheelchair, so it’s very difficult for me to raise my garage door. Almost impossible.”

An older woman with long, grayish blond hair stands in the forest using a red walker. There are tall pines all around. She wears a floppy black wide-brimmed hat and her shepherd dog stands by her side looking attentively at her face.
Dianne and her best friend at her remote property, comfortably nestled in a federal forest.

After borrowing basics from MonTECH to aid her recovery, she discovered the Montana Assistive Technology Loan Program (MATL: a partnership with Rural Dynamics, Inc.). She applied for a loan to purchase a new garage door with an electric opener. “I was approved within a few days!” Dianne remembers. “I’m grateful. Winter is coming and it takes me a bunch of tries to get that door up.”

Life will be easier without battling the garage door. Dianne doesn’t have time to mess with that when she’s got living to do. “I plan to live at least to a 102,” she says. If optimism supports longevity, we’re confident she’ll reach her goal: “I look around with eyes looking for the good and the harmony. How can I be a compassionate, giving part of the whole? I’m grateful because every day I see wonderful things and I’m around wonderful people. Because that’s what I choose.”

Any Montanan with a disability-related need can apply for a MATL loan. Approved applicants can use funds to purchase equipment, buy accessible vehicles, or pay for accessibility-related home renovation. For more information contact Melissa Hoffman at mhoffman@ruraldynamics.org.  To borrow equipment from MonTECH, go to MT-AT.org or write montech@mso.umt.edu.