Deep crimson splotches, like large drips from a painter’s brush, pock the snow and lichen-encrusted rocks. A few steps farther, they mingle with patches of gray-brown fur, some of which cling to the stiff gray branches of sagebrush. Then more blood, more fur, more blood, on down the hill. And finally, the body. Or what’s […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Dear Friends
An educational journey Our cover story, written by associate publisher Greg Hanscom, is the last in a three-year series on the Rio Grande. It’s been quite an education. While HCN has a long history with the geography and politics of the Colorado River, the Rio Grande has always been something of a mystery to us. […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Dear Friends
Spreading the News You may notice that the middle four pages of this issue look a bit different than usual. We’re using this special pull-out section to announce our Spreading the News fund-raising campaign, which is designed to support this organization’s evolution from a newspaper into a full-fledged multimedia organization. We’re already on our way. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Dear Friends
End of an era This issue’s cover story will be the last for a while from senior editor Michelle Nijhuis. Michelle left HCN at the end of the year to travel and pursue a freelance writing career. Her departure is a great loss for the paper. From the day Michelle arrived as an intern in […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
The American West is an island besieged
I saw the future of the American West. It stared at me with an unblinking black eye through a narrow metal window in the wall of an aviary on the island of Maui. “That’s the female,” said our guide, Mary Schwartz. “She’s the social one.” The facility manager for the Maui Bird Conservation Center opened […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Dear Friends
Winter break It’s time for our traditional winter break, when we give staffers time to shovel their driveways and readers time to catch up on back issues of HCN.Our next issue should reach your mailboxes around Jan. 21. Covering the bases Writing and editing a cover story can take months, but even with all that […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Dear Friends
From the inside out There may be no more powerful agent for change in any agency than someone who has worked on the inside. During the 1980s, a Forest Service timber marker from Oregon named Jeff DeBonis became sick of his role in overcutting the public lands. He founded an organization for his fellow Forest […]
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
The enduring Endangered Species Act
Four years ago, Bruce Babbitt stood at a podium in Austin, Tex., and, in his most sonorous, Garrison Keillor-like voice, delivered the new gospel on endangered species. The conservationists’ most effective tool in the restoration of species and their habitats – the Endangered Species Act – was in peril, the then-Interior secretary told the Society […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Dear Friends
About this issue Writers for this special issue about the Forest Service’s Framework for the Sierra Nevada’s 11 national forests researched and wrote their stories while taking a course in environmental journalism with Ed and Betsy Marston, the publisher and then-editor of High Country News. The couple taught the course at the Graduate School of […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
The man in the rubber boots
In the Land of IrrigationWhere the Desert blossoms as the roseThere dwells a Knight in armorWhom everyone loves that knows.He guides the little streamletsTo the famished stems and roots,He carries life in his shovel –The man in the rubber boots From “The Man in the Rubber Boots”by Agnes Just Reid (1947) When it rains in […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Transforming powers
Drought, salmon and the deregulated electricity market could end the Northwest’s love affair with public power
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Dear Friends
A-potlucking we go The far-flung board of directors of High Country News will soon gather in Paonia, Colo., for its second meeting of the year. Following an all-day session with staff on Saturday, June 2, the board will host an evening potluck in Paonia’s shady town park on Fourth Street and North Fork Avenue. All […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Dear Friends
A community of readers We like to say that High Country News is driven as much by its readers as it is by the ever-changing news. Our letters to the editor are often more entertaining and informative than anything else in the paper. And many a time we have answered the office phone and listened […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Dear friends
Relentless Over the years, High Country News has been blessed with many friends and supporters. Surely one of the most faithful is Connie Harvey. On more than one occasion, the longtime resident of Aspen, Colo., has made timely contributions that have kept the paper going or seeded a new endeavor, such as our Writers on […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Dear Friends
The Ides of March It’s hard not to get a case of spring fever these days, though Mother Nature is being her typical, contradictory self in western Colorado. Just as the first crocuses and daffodils pushed their green heads through the soil last week, a Pacific storm dumped a foot of cement-like snow on Paonia, […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Mr. Babbitt’s wild ride
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story, “Interior view,” an interview with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. In the rough-and-tumble world of American politics, you can be a hero one day, a bum the next. Few know this better than Bruce Babbitt. Eight years ago, when the U.S. Senate confirmed Babbitt as secretary […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Power on the loose
Deregulation sparks an energy revolution
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Lifting the veil of secrecy
Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West, by Len Ackland, The University of New Mexico press. Hardback: $34.95. 308 pages. Most people know that the Cold War spawned a number of nuclear bomb manufacturing facilities in the spacious American West – places like Hanford in eastern Washington state and Rocky Flats just […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Tickling the green funny bone
In the increasingly crowded world of Web magazines focused on the environment, it’s getting hard for the green at heart to decide what to bookmark. Which is why the founders of Grist magazine have injected something rare into their coverage of the often depressing retreat of the natural world: humor. “We’ve tried to cut through […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Out of the darkness
A Western Colorado community meets a coal boom halfway