Craig Childs explores the fine line that separates archeology from grave-robbing in the American Southwest.
Forces of nature
Amy Irvine, environmental activist, writer and former professional rock climber, sets her memoir, Trespass, in the stark geology of Utah’s red-rock wilderness. Following her father’s suicide, Irvine retreats from Salt Lake City to rural Utah, where she is confronted almost daily by divisive public land-use demands and ubiquitous Mormon missionaries, not to mention her tumultuous…
Rolling on the rivers
In Adios Amigos: Tales of Sustenance and Purification in the American West, Page Stegner revels in striking juxtapositions: the fragile beauty of rivers contrasted with their staggering power to destroy; people working to preserve forests and wildlife alongside a younger generation bent on using nature for self-serving purposes. This absorbing collection of essays stems from…
Dark nights of the soul
I just finished reading “My Crazy Brother” (HCN, 3/31/08). I cried. I’m a 30-year teaching veteran, 22 of which I’ve spent in a tiny community college in Colorado, where higher education is 49th in the nation. My classrooms are filled with under-, un-, wrongly and oddly prepared students. Social workers, school counselors, and other do-gooders…
A sister’s suicide
Ray Ring’s article about his “crazy brother” really touched me (HCN, 3/31/08). I lost my older sister to suicide this past Oct. 31, and our mother killed herself when I was 14. I, like Ray, believe the problems started with childhood emotional traumas that were never dealt with, and as the years wore on their…
Invest in people, not weapons
How could HCN, well known for its hard-hitting investigative journalism, publish such an uncritical article on the Yuma Proving Grounds (HCN, 3/31/08)? It doesn’t take a trip to Yuma to uncover some contrary opinions (just a few mouse clicks reveal that there is a serious problem there with depleted uranium pollution) and those cool pictures…
Up against the wall, redneck enviro
Drew Pogge believes he is without friends, finding himself “magnetically repelled” by both environmentalists and good ol’ boys because of his empathy for both (HCN, 3/31/08). He is, however, sadly mistaken. He is magnetically repelled because of the stereotypes he insists on articulating. He writes that the conservation movement is often “tainted with hypocrisy” and…
Feeding time
Dinner for the next few days is elk. It hangs from a heavy chain that dangles from a tall tripod of lodgepole pine logs. The body still smells of warmth and life. I glide my knife along the length of the whetstone, a few times on one side, a few times on the other. The…
Heard Around the West
WASHINGTON How many ways can a neighbor’s house drive you crazy? The Seattle Weekly counts 10, with each one dreadful in its own distinctive way. Among them is the “Pig Face” dwelling that thrusts its two-car garage toward the street “like a greedy sow rooting for rotten vegetables.” This house clusters in herds, and its…
Pillaging the Past
Approximately 90 percent of archaeological sites in the Southwest have been vandalized.
Leave it alone
The circle of stones sits in the Utah desert, on a bench above the murky waters of the river. Nearby, more stones are strewn about in an orderly fashion. And everywhere, pieces of gray, red and corrugated pottery lie scattered. Hundreds of years ago, this was a sacred Puebloan site. The circle, about 50 feet…
Dear friends
A CRASH IN WESTERN COLORADO What happens when an energy boom collides with an amenity boom? Join High Country News and a panel of experts on Thursday, May 15, at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo., for a rousing discussion exploring whether a gas-field town and a recreation and retirement community can coexist. Hear…
Two weeks in the West
Imagine you’re taking in the view from a national park overlook: The red cliffs, blue shadows, and cottonwood bottoms of Zion; the jagged upsweep of the Tetons from Jackson Hole; the weird snaking remains of ancient trees at Petrified Forest. True, there are also oodles of lollygagging tourons, a remuda of RVs, and some faux-woodsy…
Keeper of the wildlife
NAME Les Bighorn AGE 47 HOMETOWN Poplar, Montana TRAINING Attended the Montana Law Enforcement Academy in Helena, Montana, and is now working toward a degree in history. HE SAYS “An elder once told me that when an animal comes to you instead of running or flying away as you approach it, they are telling you…
Nuclear crossroads
Feds gear up for new nukes while cleanup lags
Remembering our atomic past
Remembering our atomic past
Cold dead fingers
About a decade ago, while waiting at the town stoplight, I read the bumper stickers on the Jeep Cherokee in front of me. Two were familiar: “The West wasn’t won with a registered gun” and “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” But the other one was new: “MY PRESIDENT IS CHARLTON HESTON.”…