First, the cuteness, because I know everyone spends at least some portion of their day watching Youtube videos of cute animals doing droolingly hypnotic cute things (cat riding a Roomba, anyone? Or how about a slow loris with a very tiny umbrella?) See? This is a pika — a diminutive rabbit-relative which makes its home […]
Sarah Gilman
Sarah Gilman is an independent writer, illustrator and editor based in Washington state. Her work covers the environment, natural history, science and place. She served as a staff and contributing editor at High Country News for 11 years.
Posted inGoat
Missing the subdivisions for the trees
At first it’s hard to tell what we’re looking at. The tiny plane bumps and bounces through turbulence that warns of an incoming winter storm, repeatedly bucking my too-tall self (despite tight seatbelt) into the low ceiling and knocking the lens of my camera against the window. Beyond the smeared glass, rolling mountains spread eastward […]
Posted inGoat
“What’s good for the rancher is good for the grouse”
Last spring, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the greater sage grouse deserved listing under the Endangered Species Act, but declined to extend federal protections because resources were limited and other species were in more peril. At the time, the decision looked like the kind of politically savvy, centrist maneuver that has become […]
Posted inGoat
When deer mice attack
Graying, skeletal aspens and fluid-filled lungs. No connection, right? Wrong. This little guy is a deer mouse. Cute, sure. But deer mice are the primary vectors for the “sin nombre” form of hantavirus — a nasty bug transmitted primarily through the rodent’s feces and urine which causes flu-like symptoms and, in later stages of infection, […]
Posted inGoat
La Nina vs. Western Snowmaggedon
Walking my dog at 6 a.m. this morning in Paonia, I could sense a presence in that exposed-fingers-will-break-off-any-minute-cuz-it’s-so-friggin’-cold feeling: Winter. A brutal minus-10-degrees-Fahrenheit kind of winter. A snow-makes-creepy-banshee-squeals-under-your-feet kind of winter. And it’s a lot of snow for Paonia, HCN‘s home base in western Colorado, with more than a foot on the ground and the […]
Posted inGoat
Snowbound? Take a virtual tour of the West
If you live in the mountains, or near them, or you have to fly over them, you know that the holidays aren’t just about visiting family, stuffing your face, or dropping into a prolonged eggnog coma (IMHO, that must be why the stuff is called “nog” in the first place). They’re also about not being […]
Posted inGoat
It’s not all lights and sirens
It wasn’t an abnormal day in most respects. No wreck-causing foul weather slicked the winding mountain roads. There hadn’t been an accident at any of the three underground coal mines just upvalley, where a steep canyon cradles the sinuous North Fork River. Even so, both of the ambulances that serve tiny Paonia, Colo. were out […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
What lies beneath
It started with a rumor. A pregnant woman heard warnings of birth defects among children born in her subdivision and contacted state health officials. The rumor was reportedly false, but tests revealed that the ground and water beneath the neighborhood were laced with poison. This is Barber Orchard, just outside of Waynesville, N.C. From 1903 […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2010: Hardrock Showdown
Forest Service tackles Idaho bighorn problem
Efforts to protect wild sheep from disease gain momentum
Posted inOctober 25, 2010: Lynch-Mob Politics
Taming the River Wild
Proposals to make rapids safer raise raft of questions
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Skipped issue
A heads-up: HCN staffers will be taking a much needed two-week publishing break after this issue to catch up on work and R&R. Look for your next issue on Oct. 11. We’re always flattered by how many folks decide to stop by our Paonia office, but Kim and Mark Schultz of Colorado Springs positively made […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Lumbering along, barely
Linking beetle-killed trees to viable markets proves difficult
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
A flood of visitors
Monsoon season struck Paonia with a vengeance in the muggy final days of July. Beyond window-rattling thunder and heart-stopping lightning, the storms have brought deluges of rain, sending irrigation ditches flooding over their banks and washing out roads and driveways. Our flood of summer visitors through HQ has continued unabated, as well. High Country News […]
Posted inWotr
Boots on the trail ought to pay up
My first introduction to Colorado’s 14,421-foot Mount Massive was, quite literally, a pile of crap. Several piles, actually, just off the trailhead where I’d wandered to pee. Some were flagged with toilet paper; others disguised with a thin sprinkling of pine needles. I walked with care. It was a skill that I would have to […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
A boring diagram
Lake Mead — Las Vegas’ primary water supply — has been drawing down like a leaky tub over the past decade, thanks to prolonged drought in the Colorado River Basin. The reservoir’s now at 43 percent of capacity and about 100 feet below full — just 45 feet above one of two main water intakes. […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Grasshoppered!
“A metabolic wildfire”: That’s how entomologist-nature writer Jeffrey Lockwood of the University of Wyoming describes a grasshopper outbreak. At high densities — say 30 per square yard — a swarm can obliterate rangeland vegetation like “a maniac on a riding mower.” And with last year’s bumper crop of grasshoppers and the potential for a warm, […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Nature-for-profit
In the market for a Siberian weasel fur coat? A pair of eel-skin cowboy boots? A Louis Vuitton purse made from ostrich and monitor lizard skin? Look no further than lonestaronline.com. In February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began an eBay-style rolling auction of some 300,000 (HOT! NEW!) items from its National Wildlife Property […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Ewe-haul
About 50 years ago, state wildlife officials decided to try to restore bighorn sheep to Wyoming’s Seminoe Mountains. Between 1958 and 1985, they brought in six new batches — 236 total — from the more prolific Whiskey Mountain herd to the northwest. But the Seminoe herd failed to sustain itself, and by last fall, there […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Poltertics, 2010
Will this fall’s election chronicle a Republican resurrection in the West?
Posted inGoat
It may be the apocalypse. . .
2012? Whatever. Clearly the apocalypse is nigh-er than that. First, there’s the weather to consider. Wave after wave of Pacific storms have left Southern California’s beaches a creepy Mad-Maxian mess of shopping carts, plastic toys and other manmade flotsam that’s washed down from various megalopoli. It’s been the worst series of storms in five years, […]