For twenty-some years I lived in a remote cabin in Washington’s North Cascades mountains. My place was the last human inhabitance on a gravel forest service road that dead-ended at the Lake Chelan Saw-tooth Wilderness boundary. Almost no one drove out that way and far fewer ever stopped in to visit, so I was surprised one autumn morning when a truck drove down my long, dusty driveway.

It turned out to be a young hunter who frantically explained that he just shot his father in law (mistaking him for a deer) and asked to use my phone. I told him I was sorry, but the nearest telephone was at my neighbor’s, two miles downriver. He raced off to call for an ambulance, but it was too late. Like so many hunting accidents, this one proved fatal for the victim.

It’s a sad story that’s played out again and again—a woman…