I’m a fairly outspoken environmentalist, so what was I doing having dinner recently in Grand Junction, Colo., with retired executives from ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the world? Well, it was kind of a reunion, since Exxon and I go back to the early 1980s, a time when I was teaching fourth grade in […]
Andrew Gulliford
Posted inWotr
Life among the Bluffoons
It’s not a well-traveled road in southeastern Utah, not far from the Arizona line, so chances are you haven’t seen two new, brick and stone signs close to the quiet town of Bluff that proudly say: “Bluff, Utah, established 650 A. D.” And you assumed that the Mormons settled Utah! No, local history for this […]
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How to find a 13,000 year-old mammoth
It takes a long time to find a curved-tusk mammoth, especially if it’s been obscured beneath tamarisk, oak brush and tenacious Russian olive bushes. I’d heard stories about mammoths once roaming the land that’s now San Juan County in southeastern Utah, but a beast from the Pleistocene is hard to locate on rock cliffs and […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Fancy a drink?
Thank you for publishing Abrahm Lustgarten’s important article about Louis Meeks and his damaged water well (HCN, 6/27/11). Mr. Meeks is clearly a hero in the 21st century American West. EnCana Corporation once prided itself on utilizing “best practices” in the production of gas wells. So I was encouraged when EnCana spokesman Randy Teeuwen spoke […]
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A prodigal son is honored by his hometown
It’s not only war heroes who get honored in the West with lasting memorials. When prodigal son Dalton Trumbo finally returned to his hometown of Grand Junction, Colo., he arrived on Main Street in a bronze bathtub. After four years, despite rain and snow, he’s still there, and some residents still can’t figure out if […]
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Slobs at Lake Powell foment a revolt
Each summer I do penance at Lake Powell for the environmental sins of its visitors. This summer was no exception as I volunteered to work on a houseboat called the Trash Tracker. Our job: picking up debris in 108-degree heat along 100 miles or so of the 1,900-mile shoreline. Our team found the usual amount […]
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Black Sunday won’t ever happen again
Twenty-eight years ago this month, on the first Sunday in May, Exxon, the largest corporation in the world, pulled the plug on its massive western Colorado oil shale project. Overnight, 2,600 people lost their jobs. Overnight, small towns learned painful lessons about the speed of the corporate guillotine. Overnight, county commissioners and town planners learned […]
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Great Old Broads celebrate 20 years of hiking and advocacy
Where in Durango, in southern Colorado, can you spot a lavender size-40D bra hanging in an office window? Why, the national office of a group called the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, of course. It’s one sign that this organization, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is not an ordinary organization. “We’re the junkyard […]
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How one “girl ranger” helped save the Southwest
Ed Abbey once called her a “girl ranger,” and that’s what she was, the very first. Lynell Schalk began her federal career tracking grave robbers and pothunters in southeast Utah, and ended it catching pot growers in western Oregon. She broke through the sagebrush ceiling as the first female special agent in charge in the […]
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Winter camping can be hazardous to your health
One hundred thirty-five years ago this spring, a six-week ordeal began for Alferd E. Packer. The starving and disoriented man stopped eating wild rose hips. Trapped in the deep snows of the San Juan Mountains of western Colorado, he began gnawing on the corpses of his deceased comrades. Thus began one of the West’s most […]
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Conscientious objectors 65 years ago
During the Vietnam War, I registered for the draft as a conscientious objector willing to serve in the military. Along with many other college students, that is how I protested the war in Viet Nam. Now we’re mired in the sands of Iraq — our desert Vietnam. But this is a different time; the Iraq […]
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All Westerners are stalwart (and other tall tales)
Western humor is all about adversity, braving the elements, surviving the landscape and stretching the truth. Call it polished prevarication. Not lies, exactly; more like embellishments. Stories that should be true, even if they’re not. Pioneers came West, and over time each group told its own jokes — cowboys, loggers, Lycra-clad bicyclists – and everyone […]
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Lake Powell’s sandstone walls speak after 232 years
Across the Southwest, Native Americans, explorers, miners, settlers and Mormon pioneers have left dozens of inscriptions on rock walls. Now, a rare historical marking has been authenticated on one of the canyon cliffs that surround Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The inscription was carved when the United States was only six months […]
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Condors – the best air show in the West
If you’re standing on the Vermilion Cliffs at sunset, looking south towards the Grand Canyon, there’s a good chance you might see a wonder of the West, the California condor. As this largest bird in North America glides over 3,000-foot-high cliffs, its wingspan of 10 feet wide makes its presence unmistakable. In other places along […]
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Hard lessons from Colorado’s concentration camp
On the southeastern plains of Colorado, on 560 acres of stunted elms, yuccas and broken concrete, you can find the remains of Colorado’s only concentration camp. Here, from 1942-1945, over 14,000 men, women and children were held against their will, patrolled by military police and surrounded by barbed wire and eight guard towers. Their crime? […]
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Life and breath in the West
My brother is dying. He lives in a small town in the West, a village really, and he moves from room to room with an air hose in his nostrils constantly filling his lungs with a steady stream of oxygen. The sun warms the south side of the house and tulips bloom in the flowerbeds, […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Where’s Teddy when you need him?
What do Westerners keep in their bedrooms? My wife and I have the assorted bric-a-brac of family photos, a Navajo rug, a miniature Apache burden basket, and far too many books. We have a few plants, early drawings by our two boys, and a vintage log cabin syrup can, because we’ll never be able to […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Tourist tales from the New West
I knew I was in trouble the first morning of our cruise. We were headed up the Columbia and Snake rivers on a Lewis and Clark bicentennial expedition, and this well-dressed widow sat down beside me at breakfast. Her diamond ring was the size of an unshelled peanut, and her hair matched the silver flatware […]