This issue is bound by the idea that the ecological crises are inseparable from the problem of human domination. Our feature story describes a coastal town in Southern California that is asking whether it can, or should, retreat inland from rising seas. Also in this issue: The Navajo Nation’s renewed police force, prisoner strikes, conspiracy theories in Arizona and a tribute to the life and work of Ed Marston, one of High Country News’ longtime visionaries.

Magazine cover: October 15, 2018: Nature Retreat

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Ed Marston, remembered

Thoughts on HCN’s former publisher from people whose lives he impacted.

by Staff

Erosive grooves

Daniel Greenstadt’s article, “Mountain bikes shouldn’t be banned from wild landscapes” (Writers on the Range, 8/7/18), covered all the complaints of the wannabe wilderness bike riders without addressing the reason for their exclusion. Bikes, like all other wheeled vehicles, create a continuous groove in soft earth that serves to channel running water from rain or…

by Walt Briggs

Misguided new direction

After 30-plus years of constant reading, I have read my final issue of HCN (8/20/18). Brian Calvert’s recent editor’s notes and many of your more recent essays and writers’ opinions have left me saddened that what was once the finest journal on the issues affecting the Intermountain West seems to have become just another “woke” partisan magazine.…

by John Mumaw

Poignant and heartwarming

The last two feature stories (“What Are We Doing Here?” HCN, 8/6/18; “Where the West Is Moving — and Why,” HCN, 8/20/18) were especially objective, well-researched, poignant and heartwarming. I’m a somewhat elderly dude who has spent much of my life working with and enriched by a wide variety of diverse folks. Also, my church is…

by Jim Barron

Resonant ruminations

I write in appreciation of Cally Carswell. She relates, with uncanny precision and brittle clarity, what it is to be a Westerner confronting the transformation of a beloved landscape. Her moving rumination, personal and profound, resonates on many levels. What a writer.  Pat CassenMiramonte, California This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine…

by Pat Cassen

‘Welcome to Hell’

Of our 46 summers in this part of southern Arizona, this one has been the worst (“What are we doing here?” HCN, 8/6/18). Gone are the rare days when the temperature hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit; now it’s seemingly endless weeks of 101, 103, even 106 degrees. Gone are the almost daily afternoon thunderstorms that left…

by Nicholas J. Bleser