If hunters can hone their target skills on computer games, why can’t anti-hunters? Now they can, thanks to a $20 parody game called “Deer Avenger,” created by a staff writer for TV’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” It stars a buck with a bad attitude and an arsenal to boot, who fights back with a […]
Betsy Marston
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
A brief brilliant life on the river
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1869, John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, was the first to explore and record the canyons of the Green and Colorado. Launching with nine sturdy men, Powell spent 100 days working his heavy, keeled boats downriver. There was no art to […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Dear Friends
Join us in Utah Readers in southern Utah and southern Nevada are invited to a High Country News potluck Friday, Jan. 22. Board members of this nonprofit newspaper plus several staffers will be on hand at the St. George Community Arts Complex, in the Pioneer Center for the Arts, 47 E. 200 N., St. George, […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Heard around the West
Who hasn’t bought a gadget or item of clothing that makes no sense but embarrasses us forever? The unscrewable ceramic soap dispenser, the one-cup hot plate, the rhinestone-edged tie, the round ice-cube maker – all mock us: “You are a foolish consumer; you buy useless objects!” A public TV station in Salt Lake City, KUED […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Dear Friends
Congratulations Two career Forest Service employees working on ecosystem management have each won $10,000 from the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore., which gives the coveted, annual Earle A. Chiles Award. The winners are Jeff Blackwood, supervisor of the Umatilla National Forest, and Thomas Quigley, a Ph.D. range economist. For the last four years, the […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Heard around the West
Northern spotted owls are supposed to be shy and almost invisible in what’s left of our ancient Northwest forests. This was not the case of a “dispersing juvenile” who chose to hang around Everett, Wash., a city of 70,000 close to the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. After spending a day roosting unobtrusively in a tree, […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Dear Friends
First snow It was like getting hit in the face with a cream pie: A wet snow dumped on much of western Colorado early this month. Trees, still laden with leaves, bent low, some breaking, some perilously stretching power lines, and until the mist cleared, all seemed heavy and ominous. Then the sun chased the […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Heard Around the West
A two-headed deer? A wildlife biologist for Montana said he’d never heard of it before. But it was true. One deer head was alive and attached to its body, while the other had been severed from its torso, most probably after a macho duel that involved the two bucks butting heads and then locking antlers. […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Dear Friends
Heading for the highway High Country News has adopted a three-mile stretch of state Highway 133 just outside of Paonia, and on Saturday morning, Nov. 21, volunteers from staff plan to pound the shoulders, picking up debris. A Sept. 23 story in the Salt Lake Tribune gave some of us pause, however. It was headlined: […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Heard around the West
Western signs continue to puzzle people. Wandering around California’s Death Valley recently, Mark V. Sheehan of Olympia, Wash., came across one for “Death Valley Health Center,” which seemed to cast doubt on their services. And Jeffrey Dickemann, who lives in Richmond, Calif., says he couldn’t figure out what the “it” meant in a huge sign […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
Dear Friends
Bright eyes When photographer Paul Bousquet of Boulder, Colo., told us he’d be spending time in our valley taking pictures of organic vegetable farms for an upcoming book, we decided to snag him for a lunchtime seminar. Gathered in our production room, we picked his brain about taking better photos of new interns and other […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
Heard around the West
Bats R Us is the name of Heidi Harris’ free service, just outside Salt Lake City, Utah. Got scores of bats flying around your high school, sending teenagers and teachers shrieking out the doors? She’ll remove – not kill – them, just as she has extricated hundreds of bats from apartment houses and businesses in […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Heard around the West
In Salt Lake City, a fat pig must find a permanent home, says the Humane Society of Utah. The tusked animal is called Elvis, and like the singer at the end of his life, he has puffed up, weighing in at 175 pounds and still putting on the pork. But the potbellied crossbreed is said […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Prisoners for hire
A new magazine called ColorLines, with editorial offices in Oakland, Calif., takes a harsh look at what it calls the “prison-industrial complex.” It finds an unsavory relationship between corporations that improve their bottom line thanks to cheap prison labor, and our society’s desire to lock up people we’ve given up trying to socialize or educate. […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Dear friends
Here comes camouflage Some of the men you see walking down the streets of this town of 1,400 look a mite peculiar these days. Their faces are deliberately dirty and they’re wearing camouflage. It’s the first clue that summer is close to over and fall is moving in fast. The earliest hunters to appear are […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Heard around the West
Maybe the issue isn’t who first threw the shoes. A huge old tree close to U.S. 50 in Nevada – dubbed “the loneliest road in America” – has become festooned with shoes and even pairs of skis and rollerblades. Stories vary as to how the shoes first went airborne, but one oft-told tale goes like […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Dear Friends
Visitors of late summer Chip Blake, managing editor of Orion magazine, stopped by after taking part in a floating reunion of river guides at Cataract Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. Chip, who has been with the Massachusetts-based quarterly for six years, shared his expertise about reaching potential new readers. In a nutshell, Chip says, anything […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Heard around the West
For two years a buffalo dubbed Bart lived without incident at a Tucson, Ariz., guest ranch, apparently content in its confinement. But recently the 2,000-pound animal busted out of his pen and the puzzlement began. No one, it seemed, knew how to corral a truly wild beast, and every attempt to trap, harass, entice (“Come […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Heard around the West
When Ed Abbey aficionados get together in Death Valley, Calif., Nov. 6-8, hospital-lab worker Gail Hoskisson is sure to be the cynosure of all eyes. Well, maybe not her, but the vintage vehicle she’s driving. It doesn’t look like much, this blue, 1973 Ford F100 pickup that has logged 197,000 miles through the deserts of […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Dear Friends
A subscription of his own After several years on HCN’s circulation desk, staffer Kathy Martinez is hard to surprise. But even she was taken aback when a Kansas mail carrier called to subscribe because the people who used to take High Country News moved off his route. “I didn’t get a chance to finish that […]