At 61, mountaineer and academic David Roberts can’t resist the chance to rack up another first. Comb Ridge is a jutting sandstone escarpment that runs from Kayenta, Ariz., to Blanding, Utah. One hundred miles long from end to end, the ridge was one of the few remaining hikes that no one had completed. But Roberts […]
Lee Ross
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
A pilgrim with a battered Nikon
Name: Jaelyn deMaría Hometown: Albuquerque, New Mexico Age: 26 Vocation: Photographer at the Albuquerque Journal Pet: Tweak, a Chihuahua Favorite food: Her grandmother’s Sunday breakfasts of eggs, beans, fried potatoes, tortillas and homemade chile. She says “When we decide to become a pilgrim on any sort of religious pilgrimage, what is important is just the […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Destroyer of worlds
A group of scientists, a secret city and a weapon of unimaginable power: The story of the creation of the atomic bomb is straight out of a spy novel, but its impacts are all too real. After the weapon was tested at the Trinity site in New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “I […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Politics, prejudice and predators
In his new book, Predatory Bureaucracy, conservationist Michael J. Robinson leads readers through the 120-year-history of the U.S. Biological Survey. When it began in the late 1800s, it was run by biologists mostly interested in studying stuffed birds. However, political pressure from cattle- and sheep-growers transformed the benign agency into a powerhouse dedicated to predator […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Head games in the hot, hot desert
No matter how well-mapped the world seems to be, explorers remain intrepid. In The Way Out, Colorado writer Craig Childs writes about how he and his traveling companion, Dirk Vaughan, found their way through a desert on the Navajo Indian Reservation in southern Utah. Both Childs and Vaughan seem to crave the harsh truths of […]