So, my neighbor finally got a ranchette. Whether it’s five acres or 40, the next step is apparently the perfect entrance gate. Rancheteers have made these huge gates the latest symbol of affluence in the West. They boast uprights bigger than my house, flanked by imported decorative boulders. The crossbar seems sometimes to be a […]
Linda M. Hasselstrom
Posted inWotr
What New York needs is a few million prairie dogs
Everybody but me is celebrating Lewis and Clark’s achievements, but I’m too peeved at William. Among other feats, those two travelers from Virginia named about 1,528 places, plants and animals. Captain Lewis, who studied science especially for the trip, correctly named one of the creatures they encountered a “barking squirrel.” William Clark changed the name […]
Posted inWotr
Bumper stickers and the politics of rage
“You’ll be lucky to get out of South Dakota alive,” the professor said, looking at one of my bumper stickers. He smiled, adding, “I may be kidding.” This was not my first warning that this bumper sticker might be dangerous. Leaving that small college campus, I was thoughtful. My cars have carried the same message […]
Posted inWotr
A dispatch from the New West battleground
Early in April 2000, I attended the auction of a ranch near my own, in a rural western South Dakota county that has resisted zoning. This is my report from the front lines where the real battle of the West is being fought — with money. The ranch was advertised as a single unit of […]
Posted inWotr
Some lessons about coyotes stick in your mind
A friend from Nevada, an environmentalist, wrote me recently to say she’s been reading the minutes of the Nevada Wildlife Commission, which is using M-4s to kill coyotes in cases of “livestock predation.” The commission is now talking about whether to allow the cyanide guns in “cases of game predation,” otherwise known as doing what […]
Posted inDecember 30, 1991: Animal rights group takes aim at hunters
Where neighbor is a verb
Minutiae matters in rural South Dakota. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/23.24/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inApril 13, 1987: Heap leach mining comes to South Dakota
Spring in South Dakota
There is a quickening in the land. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.7/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E