When I was in the fourth grade south of San Francisco, I squirted a glob of Elmers glue onto an index card, pressed a rock into it, and used a black felt tip pen to write a pretty cool sounding word beneath my specimen: Serpentine. Then, I added a brief description on the card in […]
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Jumping (to) the gun
There may be no verified wolves, yet, in Colorado, but you bet there are in the Beaver State. In the arid northeast corner of Oregon, two packs totaling 14 wolves have appeared and, of late, they’ve been worrying the locals. “You’ve got essentially a social experiment here,” Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen told the Oregonian […]
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Big Plan on Campus
Not every school has endangered species in attendance. But when you’re the size of Stanford University, you’ve got more than a few enrolled. The university owns over 8,000 continuous acres in two counties, and several cities, much of which is undeveloped oak-studded savanna or forest. Five narrow creeks flow through to the San Francisco Bay, […]
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The Spirit of Mt. St. Helens
Thirty years (and one day) ago, Mount St. Helens blew its top. Or rather, its side. After months of heightened seismic activity, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake caused the flank of the mountain to suddenly fall away. The landslide — the largest ever recorded — slammed into Spirit Lake at the foot of the volcano. A […]
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Happy birthday, Glacier NP
When I was younger, I was lucky to visit Glacier National Park in Northern Montana, which today becomes a centenarian. By now, my memories of my family’s visit are few, but distinct: Gliding on a boat over the glassine reflections of glacier-shouldered crags; walking a trail past incredibly docile, shaggy mountain goats; seeing an black […]
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Air fungus
Each year, in early May, a pilot and a researcher fly low, long hours over the Oregon coast range, sweeping back and forth in transects two miles apart. Below the small aircraft, a rugged, uneven carpet of mature and regenerating forest unrolls: a landscape scarred by logging, but still dominated by Douglas fir. They’re in […]
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Oh vaulted ancestors!
The Granite Mountain Record Vault is a veritable temple, a slightly more natural- and secure-looking version of the one in Salt Lake City, not far away. A spiritual glow even radiates from the arched entrance to its tunnels (at least in this promotional photo). But this vault holds way more folks than the spired House […]
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It’s a skunk-eat-pelican-eat-trout world out there
Each spring, on the shores of Nevada’s Pyramid Lake, fishermen in waders stand 50 feet out in the water, on stepladders, casting long, narrow loops for huge Lahontan trout. They look a little like Kodiak bears lined up on an Alaskan river. But, these men aren’t the only fishers around. American white pelicans glide long, […]
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No s#%@w
One look at the Oregon landscape, and you wouldn’t suppose “squaw” is a dirty word. Roughly 130 geographic locations in the state are labeled with the S-word. S- creeks, S- mountains, S- lakes and S- peaks — it’s found all over the place (and not just in Oregon, as HCN has reported). This June, however, […]
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Women writing the West
Over the weekend, I drove to Denver for The Association of Writers and Writing Program’s annual conference, which assumed a bit of a Western theme this year. Poets and writers overran the downtown convention center, sampling from a myriad of readings and panels. One of these focused on the challenges women writing west of the […]
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Big cats come and go
In early March, a mountain lion chased a Jack Russell terrier into a house near Salida, Colo., surprising a woman and her five-year-old son, who sat coloring with crayons at the kitchen table. Luckily, they were able to dash into a bedroom. When Division of Wildlife officials arrived and subdued the lion, they found the […]
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How much carbon is “In My Tree”?
The grunge band Pearl Jam is known for being loud — and for being socially and environmentally conscious. The rockers deserve more applause this week, after announcing they will mitigate their emissions for their 2009 tour, one tree at a time. The band’s giving $210,000 to the Cascade Land Conservancy to help restore urban forests […]
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Name that fish
Quah-rah, Ulken, Anchovies, Olthen’, All-Can, Uth-le-chan, Uthulhuns, othlecan, ulichan, fathom-fish, Oulachan, “those little finny swarming beings of the deep,” Oolá-han, uthlecan, ulluchans, Ulachans, oolachan, Hoolakans, Hooligan . . . If this list is any indication, frontiersmen had a hell of a time figuring out what, precisely, to call this thing. In 1856, when Dr. William […]
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Ladybugs and Lear
I ran into an article today about “a harbinger of bad insulation . . . good fortune and an early spring,” which stirred a memory from a few years ago, an episode out of doors. On a Friday in September, three friends and I drove east from Reno on I-80 into the Nevada desert to […]
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Totally gnarly air, dude
What might California save if it met the EPA’s current air quality standards? From 2005-’07, the figure might have been $193 million — in hospital bills alone. That’s the approximate cost of about 30,000 emergency room visits and/or hospital admissions that might have been avoided if California’s skies were more breathable, according to a new […]
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This little plaza went to Market
This little “parklet” stayed at Divisadero … And this news might make some San Franciscans go “Wee wee wee,” all the way home. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced last week that the City by the Bay will create four new plazas and five “parklets” by summer, using contiguous parking spaces volunteered by corporations and […]
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This’ll buoy your day
A bevy of bright-yellow buoys may soon bob off the coast of Reedsport, Oreg. With each rise and fall of an ocean swell, the flotilla of giant, robotic, $4 million duckies will generate electrons to power TVs and industries. The electricity will travel to an underwater substation, then by cable to shore. What impact will […]
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The scope of a pipeline
Water entrepreneur Aaron Million’s world may course with “Wild Turkey, fast horses and gunfire.” But his proposed Regional Watershed Supply Project — a massive pipeline that would dogleg 250,00 acre feet of water from Wyoming’s Green River across the Rockies, and south to Pueblo, Colorado — may not be flowing toward completion at quite the […]
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Charismatic pest control
First, check out Michelle Nijhuis’ new HCN story “Prodigal Dogs”, about the likelihood that gray wolves have returned to Colorado of their own volition, finding space to exist, or even breed, on a private ranch in the northwest part of the state. Then, get a load of this lupine scenario: In the February issue of […]
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Less parking, better air — a la carte
I salivate over wide-open spaces. Bliss, for me, is a sprawling view of distant ranges and crisp horizons—or a free, fortuitous curbside parking spot five minutes before a crowded event. Yet my environmental better half knows that “free parking” isn’t free, and that there are plenty of other types of euphoria to be had, like […]