Ouch! A fly bit me in the soft spot under the lobe of my ear. Gripped with insights about trees and rocks, I’d stopped moving for too long. While even the sheep slept that I’d come to herd, I walked back to stand in the opening of the tent. My brother mumbled inside and the […]
C.L. Rawlins
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Lessons of Lewis and Clark
Our Natural History: the Lessons of Lewis and Clark describes the wilderness of the American West as the two explorers encountered it during their journey 1804-1806, and compares it to today’s American West as shaped by industrial civilization. Long the subject of historians, the famous journals also offer author Daniel B. Botkin, a leader in […]
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
My coyote education
More than being in church, I loved the junipers. There, I learned how ants move cookie crumbs and how the first drops of rain sound. I also learned to lie about the dirt on the knees of my pants. In fourth grade we had an ant farm, one of those glass-paned horrors. Science class was […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Naked and marvelous
NAKED AND MARVELOUS The Colorado Plateau and its Drainage, a topographic map by Kenneth Perry, is the closest most of us will ever come to seeing the West from heaven. Perry combines USGS data with sophisticated Macintosh graphics to create maps that are both useful and colorful. While Raven Graphics maps are handsome and accurate, […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
I like to hunt, but I don’t like to kill
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. I always edge away from the subject of hunting. I’ve hunted and shall hunt, but I don’t talk about it much – those late-night, throaty recitations of travels and kills make me nervous. It’s miserable standing […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
My kingdom is a horse
It was a gold mountain. The gray lodgepoles of the corral sorted it into altitudes: hooves and pasterns, the flaring column of muscle and bone above the knee, the glossy wheatfield of chest, and under a mane of cloud, the great, soft planetary eye. At four, I learned a trick. I would scoop double-handfuls of […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Leopold floats us to an understanding
A View of the River Luna B. Leopold. Harvard University Press, 1994. 298 pages. $39.95 plus $3.50 postage and shipping; Customer Service Dept., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 02138 (800/448-2242). Review by C.L. Rawlins Anyone concerned with flowing water – river rats, lawyers, architects, irrigators, fly fishers and land managers – will learn to love […]
Posted inSeptember 6, 1993: On their own: Eagles make a comeback
Forest Service: Villain and scapegoat
The Forest Service is divided into old guard and new. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Forest Service: Villain and scapegoat.
Posted inFebruary 22, 1993: The continuing saga of New Mexico's Gray Ranch
Searching for the city on the peaks of Wyoming
A book excerpt from C.L. Rawlin’s ‘Sky’s Witness’ describes life as a forest tech. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Searching for the city on the peaks of Wyoming.
Posted inSeptember 12, 1988: The Reopening of the Western Frontier, Part 1
Good fences make good calluses
To an economist, this is a subversive piece because it talks about the meaning of work, rather than about the price of labor and material. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.17/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inMarch 18, 1985: A busted Wyoming mining town remains haunted by 550 lost jobs
Utahns try to bury Canyonlands dump
The Department of Energy has run into stiff opposition to its plans for siting the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste dump at the Davis and Lavender Canyon sites a mile from Canyonlands National Park. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/17.5/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inMarch 4, 1985: The West as military target
Good dog, bad dog
If dogs were totally incompatible with wilderness living, our ancestors wouldn’t have bothered having them around back in the days before concrete and the Gross National Product. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/17.4/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inNovember 12, 1984: Fierce beauty devoid of economic advantage
Fierce beauty devoid of economic advantage
One of the curious paradoxes of the American experience is that many of those who live in closest proximity to wilderness exhibit the greatest contempt for it. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/16.21/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inMarch 5, 1984: Linowes Commission raps coal leasing
Utah’s wilderness bill heads for the House
Three years in the making, Utah’s proposed Wilderness Act of 1984 begins its final battle, in the House of Representatives. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/16.4/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inJune 10, 1983: Money in search of an idea
Round 1080 in an old, old feud
President Reagan’s lifting of the 1972 executive order banning 1080 and other poisons on public land raises old questions about predator control. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/15.11/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inApril 15, 1983: Life after oil shale
Smokey the Bear deposed
The legacy of this century’s policies of total suppression of wildfire presents today’s better-informed forest managers with serious problems. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/15.7/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inDecember 24, 1982: Discovering the Rockies
Everybody has to be someplace
Is a sense of place — a link between bios and region — vital? One of America’s greatest afflictions is a feeling of homelessness, estrangement, anomie. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/14.25/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inMay 14, 1982: Coyote: Predator and Prometheus
Coyote: Predator and Prometheus
Coyotes continue to survive and adapt, despite decades of efforts to exterminate them. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/14.10/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E