Thank you for publishing the John Herrick photo of “The Narrows” on Longs Peak (“Photo contest winners,” HCN, 10/3/16). During my dozen-year tenure on the Colorado Front Range, I often considered trekking to the summit of Longs, but never actually did. One of the reasons was that I’d read vague mentions of a stretch that […]
Ray Schoch
Posted inApril 4, 2016: A Land Divided
Trailing away
The Oregon Trail was my introduction to the West (“Oregon’s Trail Through Time,” HCN, 3/7/16). In 1975, I embarked on an auto trip along as much of the trail as I could manage, using the late Gregory Franzwa’s The Oregon Trail Revisited as my guide, along with a huge roll of county road maps at […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Farmstead photo
Kudos to Michael Hudson for the spectacular image of the abandoned Kansas farmstead (“These were called the High Plains,” HCN, 5/26/14). I’d be pleased to have Julene Bair refer to me as “a grass man” and would be even more pleased if I had been there when Hudson took that sad and glorious photo. Ray […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Guns and God
Kudos to Jonathan Thompson, who will surely get plenty of negative responses to his editor’s note in Volume 40, Number 19, from numerous fundamentalists whose understanding of the First Amendment is nearly nonexistent (HCN, 10/27/08). I’m happy to have a Constitution that, at least on paper, allows everyone to worship whatever deity or higher power […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Life (after the lawn) is good
Of COURSE there’s life after the lawn. I transformed my typical suburban front lawn in Loveland to a Xeriscaped yard that won a gardening contest, and looks far better than the previous featureless expanse. True, it was no longer suitable for whiffleball, but with family grown and living elsewhere, play space was less important. The […]