For the past 33 years, High Country News has lived up to its name, focusing on the news. Though we’ve concentrated on the environment, we’ve also covered Western culture, politics and economics, because you can’t separate the environmental issues from the arenas in which they play out. Besides, the context is part of what makes […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inWotr
To restore the West, go big and go native
It’s always disconcerting to have a myth blown apart. Like when you find out your favorite sports star, who you know to be a morally upstanding person, abuses his wife. The world wobbles; food doesn’t taste as good; you just want to fall asleep and wake up when everything is back to normal. That’s what […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Learning to live with fire
I went to Mesa Verde National Park to see the ruins — not the cliff dwellings, which the Ancient Puebloan Indians mysteriously abandoned 700 years ago, but the ruined land itself. Since 1996, three major fires have torched more than half of the 55,000-acre park in southwest Colorado. You can’t help but notice the miles […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
To restore the West, go big and go native
It’s always disconcerting to have a myth blown apart — like when you discover that your favorite sports star, whom you always thought to be a nice, upstanding person, cheats on his wife or abuses his kids. The world wobbles; food doesn’t taste as good; you just want to fall asleep and wake up when […]
Posted inWotr
Like it or not, Utah’s controversial monument is here to stay
I visited the spectacular Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, when it was still a raw wound in the body politic of southern Utah. As I talked to people in the scattered towns around the 1.7 million acre-monument, I found deep-seated anger and mistrust. One county commissioner told me President Clinton cynically designated the monument […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Dear Friends
Your chance to weigh in Spring is springing in Western Colorado, and work continues on the redesign of High Country News. We’re getting a stream of good advice from readers. “HCN has made its mark by doing the kind of in-depth reporting that dailies now do less and less, and at the same time has […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Reopening the wounds in southern Utah
I visited the spectacular Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, when it was still a raw wound in the body politic of southern Utah. As I talked to people in the scattered, dusty towns around the almost 1.9 million-acre-monument, I found deep-seated anger. There was the rancher who predicted he would never again be allowed […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2003: The Wild Card
Dear friends
A wintry gathering As a gentle snow fell from a gray winter sky, 130 High Country News readers and friends jammed into the Cache La Poudre Grange in Bellvue, Colo., just outside Fort Collins. They brought splendid food and drink (thanks, New Belgium Brewery!), and a bevy of story ideas for the HCN staff. Issues […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2003: The Wild Card
Pure and simple, wilderness is not
My first encounter with a federally protected wilderness area came in the early 1980s. I was 23 and working for a conservation group in Washington, D.C., so I understood the concept. I even knew people who had dedicated their lives to trying to convince Congress to designate roadless chunks of the public domain as “wilderness,” […]
Posted inWotr
Wild times in the human weed patch
I never knew how wild my corner of the West was until my daughter started playing volleyball. It had nothing to do with volleyball or the way it transforms giggling adolescent girls into snarling competitive animals. It had to do with early morning practices. “Builds character,” my daughter’s coach said. The kids’ or the parents’, […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
He sees the society behind the scenery
I first met Ed Marston when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, wannabe journalist starting an internship at the funky little newspaper called High Country News. It was January 1984, less than a year after the paper had moved to Paonia, Colo., from its birthplace in Lander, Wyo. I arrived fresh from the nation’s capital, where I […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
A new planning tool takes flight
Have you ever endured an incredibly boring planning meeting at Town Hall? Some developer, standing before a blizzard of maps and charts, drones on about how his subdivision will fit seamlessly into your community. You know that the size and location of the project will forever mar the incredible view over the river to the […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
Dear Friends
Digging deep When Rebecca Clarren, fresh out of college and working as a maid in Alaska, decided to become a journalist five years ago, she never dreamed she’d soon be writing lengthy stories about federal water policy or the structure of Native American governments. How borrrrrring. She envisioned telling lively stories with fascinating personalities and […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Dear Friends
The loooooong view One of the joys of working at High Country News is getting caught up in the excitement of ideas. Our interns often tell us that their four-month stint here feels as much like an intensive graduate course in Western issues as it does an introduction to journalism. No one gets more excited […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Dear Friends
Ex marks the spot We love those ex-interns, especially when they land in some Western locale and start sending in stories. This issue is an intern tour de force: Tim Westby, who spent time here in the summer of 1999, penned our cover story on the misunderstood and much abused Great Salt Lake, near whose […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Dear Friends
Mixing our media Centuries from now, when historians dig through HCN’s fossil record, they may discover that this week’s cover story was a metamorphic moment in the paper’s evolution into a multimedia endeavor. The genesis for the story was a recent board meeting, where board member, rancher and Idaho state senator Brad Little told staff […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Dear Friends
The reporter’s life There’s nothing like being on the ground to really understand a story. Just ask HCN Northern Rockies editor Ray Ring, who wrote this week’s cover piece on the turmoil in West Yellowstone, Mont., the self-dubbed “Snowmobile Capital of the World.” Ray is no stranger to digging for the deeper angle. A few […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2002: How I lost my town
Dear Friends
March madness Winter finally arrived in Paonia, March 1. The thermometer at the bank dipped to 5 below zero following a blustery eight-inch snowfall. The moisture was appreciated. Snowpack is well below average in almost every drainage of the state, and ranchers are already wondering how early in the summer their irrigation water will dry […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
History’s Lesson: Build another Noah’s Ark
Michael Soule, a pioneer in the field of conservation biology, is a cofounder and current board member of The Wildlands Project, a group dedicated to maintaining and enhancing biological diversity in North America. HCN editor Paul Larmer interviewed Soule recently to explore North America’s ecological history and what it can teach us about conservation in […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Dear Friends
An Olympic-sized hangover HCN associate publisher Greg Hanscom, who hails from Park City, Utah, went home during the middle of February, to experience the greatest sports show on earth. He and other family members helped officiate the Winter Olympics’ cross-country ski events, but those duties left plenty of time to revel in Olympic mania and […]