History buffs can easily get an education alongside Western highways. Interpretive signs point out where Chief Joseph retreated, and where Lewis and Clark spent the winter. But what if you want to know what’s coming out of the smokestack in the distance? Or what gets made inside that gigantic steel structure you just passed? The […]
Michelle Nijhuis
Michelle Nijhuis is a contributing editor of HCN and the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. Follow @nijhuism.
Posted inWotr
Climate change is pulling the trigger
I once spent an entire summer catching frogs. Most people, I gather, do this in elementary school: I was in my early 20s, with a supposedly marketable college degree. I guess I should have done something a little, well, more mature. But I had an excuse. I’d been hired by the U.S. Geological Survey to […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The end of something really big
As soon as we read about the dead whale, it was clear we were about to take a field trip. “Let’s go,” said my friend Nathan, peering at a newspaper photo of a giant beached vertebrae. He’s a sculptor, so he has an artist’s appreciation for bones. Besides, his mother had recently cracked one of […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
The Ghosts of Yosemite
Scientists from the past bring us a message about the future
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
In the Great Basin, scientists track global warming
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Ghosts of Yosemite.” Eugene Raymond Hall, one of biologist Joseph Grinnell’s first graduate students, was “a robust, pipe-smoking, extroverted individual,” known for his stubbornness and rough edges, writes historian Barbara Stein. In many ways, he was unlike his reserved mentor, but his scientific […]
Posted inWotr
The end of something really big
As soon as we read about the dead whale, it was clear we were about to take a field trip. “Let’s go,” said my friend Nathan, peering at a newspaper photo of a giant beached vertebrae. He’s a sculptor, so he has an artist’s appreciation for bones. Besides, his mother had recently cracked one of […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
The grasslands — humanity’s big backyard
“We live in grasslands, and we live off them,” write biologists Carl and Jane Bock. “They are our backyards, in an evolutionary if no longer always in a literal sense.” For more than three decades, the Bocks have studied humanity’s backyard, mostly in the form of an 8,000-acre former cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona. On […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
Dinosaur tracks on a desert shore
NAME Martin Lockley VOCATION Paleontologist KNOWN FOR Tracking dinosaurs in Glen Canyon HOME BASE Denver, Colorado HE SAYS “Some people go to Lake Powell to eat, drink and be merry, but we go to sweat, toil and bust our knees on the rocks.” On a warm summer evening in southern Utah, paleontologist Martin Lockley is […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
The American Dream, sans gasoline
I’ve had it with gasoline. Not only is it helping melt the glaciers in Glacier National Park, thaw the Alaskan permafrost, and drown low-lying Pacific islands, but it’s also emptying my wallet. So when my husband, Jack, and I decided to buy a new car recently, we both wanted it to use as little gas […]
Posted inWotr
The American Dream, sans gasoline
I’ve had it with gasoline. Not only is it helping melt the glaciers in Glacier National Park, thaw the Alaskan permafrost, and drown low-lying Pacific islands, but it’s also emptying my wallet. So when my husband and I decided to buy a new car recently, we both wanted it to use as little gas as […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Finding good grub in Mormon redrock country
The small towns that border the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah have long steamed with political and cultural conflict. But on the northern edge of the monument, in the tiny town of Boulder, a determined peacemaking effort is under way. Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle, two young chefs from Flagstaff, Ariz., moved to […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Troubled — and shallow — waters on the West’s largest river
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “What happened to winter?“ Mountains, it is often said, are the West’s water towers. If snowfall fails to fill the towers, or warm temperatures empty them too early in the year, fish, farmers and other water users face a dry summer. That’s especially true […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
What happened to winter?
A bizarre season leaves Westerners wondering what’s next
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
A chemical cocktail pollutes Western water
Traces of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, other compounds turn up in streams and wells
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Drought and spring rains portend an explosive summer
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “What happened to winter?“ Where there’s drought, there’s fire, and this year, the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rockies are bracing for a fierce summer. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, D, whose Department of Ecology declared a statewide drought emergency on March 10, has requested […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
On the dark side of the park: a ranger’s memoir
Park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith dreamed of a career in Yosemite or Grand Teton, but fate led him to California’s Auburn State Recreation Area, a place he calls “the inverse of Yellowstone.” During his 14 years as a ranger in the canyons of the American River, the long-planned Auburn Dam loomed over the place, always […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Prowling the back spaces of the West
The drive from Salt Lake City to the Nevada border feels like a ride in a not-too-seaworthy sailboat. Long-haul rigs blast past me, leaving my rickety little four-door swaying in their wakes. The flat, briny waters of the Great Salt Lake reach south toward the highway, threatening to rise up and reclaim their ancient territory. […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Capturing a Chediskai childhood
Eva Tulene Watt was born in 1913 on the Fort Apache Reservation, just north of the Salt River in southeastern Arizona. She’s traveled far during her long life, living and working in Spokane, Wash., Stillwell, Okla., and San Francisco, Calif., among other places. But her home has always been in and around the small reservation […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Written in the Rings
Tree rings reveal the climate of the past— and help foretell the future. Their message? Get ready for hot, dry times.
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
So, you want to be a dendrochronologist?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Written in the Rings.” Sure, counting tree rings might sound like a cushy job. But before you set out into the bristlecone pines, make sure you know what you’re in for. A few of the basic requirements: Strong legs. Since the clearest records of […]