Telephone of the Wind comes to Boettcher Park

It’s mostly big old trees, grass, and the swish and murmur of Flathead Lake in the background at the eastern end of Boettcher Park. That’s why Suz Rittenhouse chose to put a Telephone of the Wind there.

She read about the Telephone of the Wind online. One of the first was installed by a man in Japan who was grieving for his cousin. He installed a plain black rotary phone in a phone booth in his garden, and he would dial his cousin’s number and speak to him, according to an article on Literary Hub by Laura Imai Messina.

After the 2011 tsunami in Japan, many people who lost family members, spouses, children, and friends came began to use his telephone, the British Broadcasting Corporation said in an online piece about the phone.

Rittenhouse lost her younger sister last year, and now calls her, and others, on the Telephone of the Wind.

”I dial their names,” Rittenhouse said of people she calls, adding that there’s something about the lag between dialing one number and the next that makes a person concentrate.

The process of installing a Telephone of the Wind was simple, she said. Find a secluded place, mount an old rotary phone there; in Rittenhouse’s case, it’s a tree. After the Polson Parks and Recreation Department gave her the go-ahead, Rittenhouse’s neighbor, Bob Gorder, made a wooden frame for the piece and came to the park to help Rittenhouse install it.

Flathead Sign and Graphics made the sign. The telephone itself came from eBay, and goodness knows what secrets and information it heard before arriving in Boettcher Park.

Then the magic happened. Whether it’s something about the ritual of dialing a phone – and it needs to be a rotary dial – and getting an answer or just the feel of the receiver in your hand, the Telephone of the Wind was there to stay..

The trees provide a secluded place for a person speaking on the phone so only the wind and the trees and the water can hear. Maybe it’s because you can hear the wind but not see it that the telephone of the wind reaches your heart.

You can speak to whoever you want to – your grandmother who passed away, a person whose views you despise, a friend who has drifted away, someone you love, an ex, a I-shouda-married-him lost love who still makes your heart ache, your granddad, or a favorite teacher.

Will they hear you? As poet, songwriter and singer Bob Dylan said, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”