An energy boom of unprecedented proportions is transforming western Colorado towns like Rifle, which just recently recovered from the last big energy boom – and a catastrophic bust.
A quietus made … Is no sin
I think it is worth remembering that for every “crazy” person who kills himself, there are many more suicide victims who show no evidence of “craziness”at all. I’ve lost three dear friends to gunshot suicide. None of us saw the signs, and indeed, they were hard to detect. But maybe, as the world itself becomes…
No country for old men
I’ve lived in rural eastern Oregon for 37 years, and in that time have known several suicides (HCN, 3/31/08). Some are variations on the scripts that Ring discusses. But there is another type of suicide that is not unusual in the rural independent West – the elderly or terminal individual who clings to control over…
California protestin’
April Reese’s analysis of the leasing protest game told a story familiar in California as well as the Intermountain West (HCN, 3/31/08) Recently, Los Padres ForestWatch, in partnership with rural landowners, protested a lease sale of more than 20,000 acres adjacent to the Los Padres National Forest. Later, all but one of the parcels were…
Words that mountains speak
In the 18th century, when the Romantics looked up at the mountains of Europe, instead of seeing what their predecessors saw – foreboding rocky obstacles to human advance – they saw sublime peaks. Rather than fear, they felt wonder and desire. In a swift shift of perception, they re-wrote European attitudes towards mountains, initiating the…
Small-town struggle in a big land
The Enders Hotel, winner of the 2007 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, chronicles a childhood and coming of age in Soda Springs, Idaho, amid the beauty of the high desert and the rampant alcoholism of a Western “company”town. After stints elsewhere in Idaho and in Washington, young Brandon Schrand, his mother, and stepfather settle in…
The West’s wacky weather
In December of last year, High Country News ran a news report about the severe drought then plaguing the West. Ski slopes were brown, wildfires were still burning in California and New Mexico, and weather forecasters were calling for an ultra-dry Western winter. By the time the issue hit the streets, those streets and everything…
Coffeepots and climate
As I rode my bike north out of Fort Collins, Colo., the houses thinned out, replaced by cows and horses. In one field between me and the foothills, several pronghorn antelope ran from me in a short leaping spurt, turned and looked back, then resumed their grazing. A string of steel power line structures, which…
Heard Around the West
WASHINGTON John Slemp, a 52-year-old UPS driver from Portland, recently snowmobiled to the top of Mount St. Helens with his son, Jared, who is just back from serving a year in Iraq, reports the Seattle Times. In the cold, crisp air, the men decided to do something risky: They crawled onto a cornice overlooking the…
Boom! Boom!
In western Colorado, an energy boom of unprecedented proportions has been layered on top of a thriving amenity economy. Which will come out on top?
CRASH?
There was a time in much of the West when communities would hop onto an extractive boom like a hobo onto a freight train, determined to ride those high-paying jobs all the way to the end of the line. That was certainly the case in western Colorado for a long time. But these extractive economies…
The gospel according to Ron Gillett
Fiery advocate against wolves connects with a small farm town
Climate Revolutionary
Creating a legal framework for saving our planet
The mysticism of mud
Mud season just ended on the sage-covered mesa north of Taos that I call home. During the last few months, you could tell who lives on dirt roads by the perpetual stripe of mud on their lower pant legs. That’s normal. But I have never seen as much mud as I saw this spring. On…
Language is a virus
Jonathan Thompson’s use of the phrase “self-murder”is ill-advised, and “crazy”(as used by both Thompson and Ray Ring) arguably is, too, in this context, in particular as a major heading on the front page (HCN, 3/31/08). Yet more telling, however, is Thompson’s – and to a degree (and surprisingly) Ring’s – apparent ignorance of how mental…
Dear friends
HILLMAN AWARD FOR RAY RING Senior editor Ray Ring has won the prestigious 2008 Sidney Hillman journalism award in the magazine reporting category for his cover story “Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields,”April 2, 2007. Since 1950, the foundation has recognized “journalists, writers and public figures whose work promotes social and economic justice.”Past…
Two weeks in the West
Spend an hour bare-skinned in the relentless sun and howling winds common along the Rocky Mountain states’ front ranges, and you’ll get a visceral (and likely angry red) understanding of the elements fueling yet another energy boom in the West. Wind and solar development is ramping up across the region, according to two recent industry…