With election results looming and wildfires still burning, this issue’s on-the-ground reporting – from the Inland Northwest to southern Arizona – canvasses the landscape for solutions. Our feature takes a deep dive into the history, and future, of a co-operatively managed food distribution hub in Spokane, where small farmers collaborate in the name of community – and where the pandemic opened the door for new partnerships. We spend time in Arizona’s Patagonia Mountains with the Soto family, whose connection to their land has survived the boom-and-bust cycles of a legendary mining region. Documentary photos convey their story and enrich the entire issue. A photojournalist memorializes the “silent guests” on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana, where missing and murdered Indigenous women refuse to be forgotten. This issue roves the Intermountain West with stories about wildlife connectivity; a hunter for whom queerness and rural identity are forever intertwined in the high Montana sagebrush; and a Las Vegas couple navigating multiple jobs, parenting and homeschooling. We also hear from researchers, who explain why wildfire models cannot keep up with the extremes of climate change, and how COVID-19 imperils efforts to keep invasive species from spreading. Finally, we spend time with a historian, who ponders the lessons of Redwood Summer; a poet, whose lyrical portraits fight off harmful misrepresentations; and a novelist, who updates a Latin American literary trope for the digital age.

Smoke from the Riverside Fire fills the air outside of Beavercreek in rural Clackamas County, Oregon, in September. Wildfire modeling of the past is failing in the face of the unprecedented conflagrations of today. Credit: Kristina Barker

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How do you cover the West?

I enjoyed reading the interview with editors Betsy Marston and Paul Larmer, “A little paper with clout” (September 2020). There were two questions posed regarding HCN’s increasing coverage of social issues as opposed to strictly natural resources and public-lands issues. Please, please, please don’t stop covering social issues and city issues.  HCN has its finger…

by Ashley Saulsberry

Only connect

“The Physics of Connection” by Barb Lachenbruch was a fine essay (September 2020). The author did a tremendous job of weaving together heartfelt sentiments. She eloquently took us through the arc of her life and her father’s. Having lost a parent to Alzheimer’s myself, the author’s touching yearnings to connect with her father were emotions…

by Dan Jones

Perfect phraseology

While tromping around for many years in such “awesome” places as the Colorado Plateau, the Northern Rockies and Alaska, I have struggled for words to describe their grandeur, and thus will be forever grateful to Paige Blankenbuehler for using the perfect phraseology in her article, “Grand Disjunction” — “the kind of landscape whose scale outflanks…

by Clayton Parr

Prime HCN topics

I enjoyed learning about HCN’s history in the 50th anniversary issue (September 2020) and, in particular, Carl Segerstrom’s interview with Betsy Marston and Paul Larmer. I agree with Marston that regularly including Native journalists and issues is a welcome improvement and also that HCN should “start with the public lands, because everything flows from that.”…

by Felice Pace

Too darn hot

Congratulations on an incredible piece of journalism, “Extreme Heat” (September 2020). The content, obviously, is compelling, but writer Jessica Kutz’s language, style and structure made it read as a wonderful piece of literature. Clearly, you put a lot of work into the article, and it shows. Thank you for the work you do. Trey Duffy…

by Trey Duffy

White utopias conflates

Jordana Rosenfeld’s book review of White Utopias shows some serious confusion (October 2020).  Rosenfeld’s language conflates spiritual growth with the trendy issues of social justice. I can answer the question posed by the review’s title — “Is spiritual growth possible without confronting whiteness?” — in one word:  Yes. That’s because spiritual growth has nothing to do…

by Avram Chetron

Energy, elections, public lands

I really appreciated the well-researched and in-depth reportage on the presidential candidates’ public-land policies and how they would affect the Grand Junction, Colorado, community (“Grand Disjunction,” October 2020). This critical issue is often overlooked and under-covered. I did take issue with the voices that were highlighted. The two conservationists were well-spoken and versed in public-land…

by Jacob Mandell

Getting out the vote

Good job, HCN, and fine reporting by Jessica Kutz on the “Young and politically empowered” Latino canvassers like Fhernanda Ortiz, and their drive to register young Latinos in Arizona to vote (October 2020). This is worthy of a shout of encouragement — a great cause essential to the survival of this democracy. Stay strong, and thank you!…

by Charles Dorsey