This issue examines the value of the West’s open spaces, its public lands, and its rich natural and cultural resources. In such places we find solace, as well as common values across cultural and political divides. In our cover story, Kate Schimel, the magazine’s digital editor, visits a “wilderness for weirdoes,” asking what it means to love such a place, Correspondent Sarah Tory takes us to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where a piece of Americana, 12,000 years in the making, is crumbling rapidly away and essayist Peter Friederici examines our complicity in the realities of climate change.

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Solace in wild spaces

The weekend before the presidential election, I went into the Raggeds Wilderness, a few hours outside of Paonia, Colorado, hoping to fill my elk tag. I sat shivering on a ridge in the predawn dark, watching the stars of Orion wheel over mountains some 70 million years old. Then, as light broke across an aspen…

by Brian Calvert

Join us for the holidays

As a nonprofit newsmagazine, High Country News has always been dedicated to independent reporting about the West and its communities. A big thanks to all our supporters and donors for helping us continue to dig deep into important stories. We’re going to be listening to and relying on our readers more than ever, and we…

by Lyndsey Gilpin