The work that needs to be done offers meaning.
Auden Schendler
Auden Schendler ran sustainability programs at Aspen One for 25 years. For this piece, he is writing in his personal capacity. His new book is Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul. Auden is a former High Country News intern.
Posted inArticles
In a time of division and hate, wildfire unites a community
Disaster response offers an antidote to the era of “me.”
Posted inArticles
The business of climate change, in market terms
Climate change solutions are socially and politically divisive, but they needn’t be.
Posted inArticles
How to make the People’s Climate March matter
Political protest works best with prolonged effort.
Posted inArticles
How to fix exclusive resort towns
It’s time to rethink urbanization in mountain communities.
Posted inJune 13, 2016: Water to Dust
It’s time for our legislators to stop ignoring science
How public policy-making ought to work: Get the facts, make the policy.
Posted inArticles
In small-town baseball, a wider world
My anxiety-prone 7-year-old son, Elias, was so nervous about his first baseball game that he felt sick. “Those are called butterflies,” I said. To help him out, I took him into the backyard and pitched some balls, all the while reciting a litany of “great athletes who got nervous” stories. I told him that the […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Big water, big dreams
The Emerald Mile: the Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand CanyonKevin Fedarko432 pages, hardcover: $30.Scribner, 2013. When did we get so petty? At a time when we’re faced with huge issues – a changing climate, a healthcare crisis, a democracy threatened by money in politics, the legacy […]
Posted inWotr
In the land of getting nothing done
A delegation of outdoor recreationists go to D.C. to lobby for climate action — and walk into the congressional shutdown.
Posted inWotr
Ski mountains move to stop climate change
Winter recreation is just one potential casualty of a changing climate.
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Are you strong? Remembering Randy Udall
I think we will find a solution to climate change, but we will need each other to make it happen. Over the years, the environmental community has become fractured on the issue — arguing over the best approach, becoming frustrated and critical. And all this is healthy, but only if seen as part of a […]
Posted inRange
Are You Strong? Remembering Randy Udall
The following was previously published at Think Progress. Please also check out a list of links to Randy’s essays for HCN, located below the post. I’ll keep movin’ through the dark with you in my heart my blood brother. —Bruce Springsteen I think we will solve climate change, but to do it we will need […]
Posted inWotr
Childhood’s end
My 7-year-old daughter Willa came home from school last week and said she knew what sex was. Her friend Melissa had told her. “OK, what is it?” My wife Ellen asked, as I poured the bourbon for the Manhattan I knew I’d need. “It’s when a man and a woman lie down together and kiss.” […]
Posted inWotr
Great hope, great fear
Last month, three little girls, ages 8, 5 and 2, and their mother, were killed in a Wyoming flash flood that washed away their van. It was the kind of torrential downpour climatologists predict will increase as the planet warms. Their father survived. He alone can speak of the horror of trying to save his […]
Posted inWotr
Journeys we take at home
Every day, I hear the same thing from parents whose children have grown up. “Enjoy it while you can,” they tell me. “It goes so fast.” With a 3-year-old boy, Elias, who consistently wakes up in the middle of the night “needing sumfin” and a 6-year-old girl, Willa, who also wakes up frequently, saying “I […]
Posted inWotr
When a scientist becomes an activist
In my office, I have a picture of a man testifying to Congress. He is haggard, with the look of someone under great strain. Behind him, engraved on the wall, is a quote from the book of Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The man in the picture is NASA climatologist James […]
Posted inWotr
Time to cowboy up
There’s a saying here in the West when you’re sniveling too much. The term is “cowboy up,” and it means, “Suck it up.” It’s “buck up, little camper” for grownups. Here’s a sample use: If you’re a cowhand who just tore a thumb off in a roping accident, you need to cowboy up and bite […]
Posted inWotr
What the Crandall Canyon mine disaster tells us
In March, I testified before a House subcommittee on energy and mineral resources about the impact of climate change on public lands. There were seven witnesses, and one was Robert Murray, founder of Murray Energy and owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. This, as everyone knows, is the mine that recently collapsed, burying […]
Posted inWotr
The clock is ticking
Last month, we both received the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Protection Award. The EPA awards are meant to encourage individuals and institutions leading in the fight against global warming, which has emerged as the greatest threat to planetary security that we face. Selected by an international panel of judges, our fellow awardees included the Rev. […]