At about 4 p.m. every Winter afternoon, a small herd of mule deer meanders from the sagebrush and snow-clad flanks of Western Colorado’s Mt. Lamborn onto the numerous irrigated pastures below. There, they eat everything they can — dried grass, alfalfa and exotic weeds — to combat the nightly cold and the lingering effects […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inGoat
The Visual West — Image 4
Though the days are slowly lengthening, the orchards in Western Colorado still sleep under a blanket of snow. In this shot, two kids on the way home from school cut through a pear orchard outside Paonia, Colorado. Hard to imagine that in just a couple of months this scene will be awash in white petals […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 3
I can’t seem to sleep; I’m fighting a cold which makes breathing a conscious endeavor, but I think the real cause of my insomnia is the full moon. With a reflective boost from the January snow cover, our dark little corner of rural Colorado glows like a mall parking lot in the center of Denver, […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 2
Snow has the amazing ability to visually soften the land. Here, snow has transformed a small boulder field on Colorado’s Grand Mesa into a sensuous series of drifts. I shot this one in color, but like it better in black and white. For a lively and informative update of this year’s remarkable snow conditions in […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 1
Drive the back roads of Delta County, Colorado, these days and you have a good chance of spotting a bald eagle atop some old cottonwood tree, or sometimes on the ground in a pasture of cows, tearing into some nutrient rich afterbirth. Baldies show up every winter here, and seem to be increasing in numbers. […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2010: Hardrock Showdown
Mining Reform: Deja vu again and again
This Editor’s Note accompanies the HCN feature story: Hardrock Mining Showdown. “Mining Reform May Hit Paydirt in 1993.” That was the headline of a story I wrote for High Country News following the election of President Bill Clinton and his appointment of the reform-minded Bruce Babbitt as Interior secretary to oversee the West’s federal lands. […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2010: Dr. No
HCN bids farewell to an old friend
Sometimes we are fortunate enough to get a closer look at the lives of our remarkable readers. Shortly after longtime HCN reader and donor William L. Berry Jr. died on Sept. 30 from pancreatic cancer, two of his sons, John and Scott, got in touch with us to tell us a bit more about their […]
Posted inOctober 1, 2010: Dancing with Climate Change
A tight — but stable — budget, and a big bash
Eight members of the High Country News board of directors joined staff for a meeting in Fort Collins, Colo., Sept. 17-18. The main business was passing an annual budget, a task made easier by the tremendous financial support from readers during our 40th Anniversary. Despite the recession, HCN’s reserve remains at nearly $500,000, about the […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Who can capture the Forest Service?
As an impressionable teenager who had fallen in love with the wild landscapes of the American West, I was shocked to discover that the vast public lands were not all that wild, nor even fully public. That was particularly true of the deserts, grasslands and forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
The call of the semi-wild
The cars head slowly up the mesa through a patchwork of open fields and cedar woodlands. Binoculars around my neck, I sit in the backseat of the lead vehicle, a well-used Subaru station wagon. Jason Beason, a young father and biologist who works for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, is our driver and expedition leader. […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Our founder, the man and the myth
Tom Bell still inspires a young Westerner
Posted inJuly 19, 2010: The Ute Paradox
HCN rocks with eTown
ETown, the eco-groovy weekly radio music show based in Boulder, Colo., will honor HCN Founder Tom Bell and HCN‘s 40th Anniversary with its E-chievement Award at a special concert July 30 at the Redrocks Amphitheater near Denver. The “Greenrocks at Redrocks” event will feature great music from Lyle Lovett and Taj Mahal, a little stage […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Rapid runoff
On April 1, it looked like this would be a banner water year for Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which receives just six to eight inches of precipitation annually and relies on snowmelt to fill streams and irrigate crops. Heavy spring storms had bumped the snowpack in the surrounding mountains to 113 percent of the historic […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Dust in the wind and the water
One morning last week, I woke up and couldn’t see the mountains. Was it snowing? No, it was dusting … again. The wind, which had howled all day and night, had finally died down, but the dry and loose soils it had borrowed from Arizona and Utah were still precipitating all over our Colorado cars, […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
HCN’s key numbers: 3, 170, 20
To save some money during these tight times, the High Country News Board of Directors held its late spring meeting over the phone and Internet on May 20. Thanks to the marvels of technology, including the tiny cameras in most of our computers, the experience wasn’t half bad. Board president Florence Williams of Boulder, Colo., […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Changing of the editorial guard
A couple of issues back, you may have noticed that High Country News was advertising for a new editor in chief. Jonathan Thompson has decided to leave HCN and Paonia in June and head out on a new adventure with his family, leaving the Four Corners region in which he has spent his first 40 […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Hard times reshuffle the political deck
A couple of years ago, signs asking “Why Does Ritter Hate Oil and Gas?” sprouted along western Colorado’s roadsides, just as Gov. Bill Ritter promised new regulations designed to temper the state’s frenzied drilling boom. Industry boosters claimed Ritter would regulate them right out of the state. And oddly enough, within the year, many companies […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Power (and financial) struggle
Despite running head-to-head with President Obama’s State of the Union speech and a talk on campus by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, our Jan. 27 panel discussion on energy, activism and the role of the media on the Navajo and Hopi Nations drew more than 100 Tucsonians. “Power Struggle,” co-hosted by the University of […]