Paul Larmer

Eighteen months ago, High Country News kicked off a series about the West’s ranchlands with a cover story titled “Who Will Take Over the Ranch?” That first story laid out in stark terms the rapid loss of the West’s wide-open spaces to the real estate economy that now so fervently grips the region. In the […]

There’s an economic debate we often have in this western Colorado valley, and it centers around our underground coal mines. How big a hit would our community take if the mines, which have been part of the landscape for a century and directly provide for some 800 people and their families, suddenly closed? The debate […]

Across the West, people are buying up small (and sometimes not so small) pieces of the countryside, and transforming them with roads, cars and pets into sprawling replicas of the places they just left. It’s an all-too-familiar story, and it has become all too easy to ignore. Another alfalfa field converted into a mall? So […]

Hardly a week goes by that I don’t read a heartwarming story in our local newspaper about a conservation easement deal that is saving some important chunk of the West from the subdivider’s bulldozer. The typical story features the landowner, usually a longtime farmer or rancher, who waxes eloquent about the importance of the land […]

The U.S. Forest Service has come a long way. No longer does the agency view the 190 million acres of national forests it oversees simply in terms of board-feet and dollars, as it did even as recently as 15 years ago. These days, most of its scientists and managers understand that forests are complex living […]

It’s springtime in the Rockies, which means blizzards, blooming fruit orchards, and lots of baby bovines in the valley-bottom pastures. A month ago, the calves were small, dark lumps deposited on dun-colored fields; today, they are energetic youngsters, chasing each other across green grass in free-for-all games of tag. In a matter of weeks, most […]

In 1981, when I got my first car — a used Toyota Corolla — I took a trip out West. For a prisoner of the sprawling suburbs of St. Louis, Mo., nothing could have been sweeter than to put that sea of homes in the rearview mirror, and fill the windshield with glorious views of […]

I have a confession to make: I like natural gas. Every morning at five minutes before 6:00, I wake up to the gentle whumph of the gas heater kicking on in the family room. I then get out of bed, tap on my son’s door and call, “Time to get up,” and plant myself in […]

I stepped onto the front porch to the bugling of an elk early one morning this week. As the eerie fluting carried over the gray, frozen hayfield, something fired briefly in my brain — perhaps some ancient instinct dulled by the years I’ve spent inside buildings, staring at computers, or behind the wheel of a […]

Since Christmas, an almost continuous stream of Pacific moisture has raced over Colorado and much of the West, dumping rain in the valleys and heavy snows in the mountains. The sun and crystalline blue skies I brag about to my non-Western friends and relatives have made only rare appearances in the narrow seams between storms. […]

This issue’s cover story is a bit of a departure for us. Usually, we print an in-depth story from a single author on a topic we believe will resonate with readers throughout the West. But pivotal moments in history can prod even the most ardent adherents of routine to venture outside their boxes. And this […]

There was a brief moment of civility the day after the bitterly fought presidential campaign. On that bloody Wednesday afternoon, John Kerry and George Bush both acknowledged each other and the need for the nation to unite again. Mr. Bush sounded humble when he said, “A new term is a new opportunity to reach out […]

Just as sports fans have their legends of the game — their Babe Ruths, Michael Jordans and Jack Nicklauses — so, too, do conservationists. Our legends aren’t household names; my daughter had never heard of Aldo Leopold until her high school science teacher put A Sand County Almanac on her optional reading list last week. […]

As I read through the usual glut of e-mail press releases from environmental groups the other day, I came across one announcing a lawsuit against an Idaho logging project that is being offered by the Bureau of Land Management. Nothing unusual there: Though logging has diminished in the West over the last decade, the projects […]

The other evening, I drove out to the unofficial shooting range in the hills outside of town. It consists of a metal shack and a dusty flat area glinting with bullet shells, where locals fire away at a remarkable variety of appliances, plastic chairs and other refuse. Hardly any vegetation covers the denuded hills, save […]