When they emerge from the trees while cruising down a popular run at Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Resort, skiers suddenly encounter the back of a life-size statue of Jesus Christ. Clad in a flowing blue robe, the statue’s arms stretch toward the Flathead Valley below. It has been here for over half a century — a […]
Tim Lydon
Posted inWotr
Greens need to occupy the Occupy movement
I recently drove to nearby Anchorage, Alaska, to join a crowd of 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters. Many held signs denouncing economic disparity, certainly a good reason to take to the streets. But my sign was about environmental disparity, the result of wealthy corporations despoiling our shared forests, air and even the world’s climate to […]
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Ice matters
“Now I know a glacier,” said Leon, a playwright from New York. We sat across from each other in front of a small driftwood fire, the cool Alaskan evening wrapping us in darkness. Leon had just spent five days with me as an artist-in-residence in the wilderness area where I work. Each day, our near […]
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This Earth Day, it’s all about the air
As we prepare to mark the 41st annual celebration of Earth Day, we can thank Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and other Democrats for beating back the most recent attacks on the Clean Air Act. Perhaps America’s most successful environmental safeguard, this law has protected human health and the environment for four decades. Today, it’s emerging […]
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Finding place
For 14 years, I’ve been a wilderness ranger in a remote corner of southeast Alaska. What started as a summer job, something to fund my Western travel adventures, somehow turned into a career. Just as unexpectedly, I’ve learned about the powerful bond that can form between people and a place. This wilderness I’ve come to […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Religious leaders shouldn’t duck their responsibility
On a Sunday morning last fall, leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faiths led the third annual “blessing of the waves” in Huntington Beach, Calif. The event celebrated the ocean’s spiritual value and also protested marine pollution, including the rapid acidification of the world’s oceans associated with climate change. Over 3,000 people participated, and […]
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Celebrating the 30th anniversary of protecting huge swaths of land
Alaska conservation act was innovative step
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Living with wolves takes some practice
I paddle to a favorite meadow with my friend, Solan. It’s late summer in southeast Alaska, when the tall grasses are turning yellow and the mountaintops are lost in clouds. Coming ashore, we step over dead salmon dragged from the stream by bears. Walking toward the stream, I talk about the time I watched a […]
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Climate of denial
We’re a nation in denial. Record heat waves and shrinking snowpacks surround us, yet our appetite for fossil fuel remains unwavering, and, incredibly, some still doubt that it’s a threat to a stable climate. Witnessing this from southeast Alaska, where I work as a wilderness ranger, is a trip right into this odd realm of […]
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What have we learned a century after the Big Blowup?
A devastating wildfire leaves its marks on the West.
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Only 40 years ago, the Earth got its day
The upcoming 40th anniversary of Earth Day is a testament to Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin who conceived of the celebration during a 1969 tour of the West. Earth Day turned out to be a brilliant idea, but Nelson went on to accomplish even more, shaping environmental protections that many of us take […]
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Winterkill
Not far from where I live, in northwestern Montana, the land opens up and the people disappear. Skiing through tall trees toward a ridge, we see two ravens chasing a magpie through a glade up ahead. A moment later, three bald eagles appear, all sitting at the very top of trees. These normally quiet woods […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
A nature lover’s bucket list
Lately, I’ve been struggling to stay positive about the climate. It’s not easy. The 190 nations at the November summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on greenhouse gases, and Congress seems determined to avoid the issue. Worst of all, polls show cooling anxiety about climate change among Americans; these days, we are too consumed […]
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Setting the record straight on wilderness
It’s been a good year for wilderness. In March, the Omnibus Lands Bill designated over 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states. In September, President Obama declared a month-long celebration of the Wilderness Act, and this November, the United States, Canada and Mexico signed the world’s first international agreement on wilderness conservation. Perhaps because […]
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Old friends are melting away
I met this glacier nearly 20 years ago. It was remote and unnamed, and I called it the “Raw Glacier” for the primordial way its blue snout bulged through a granite canyon. It was a mile long. I was a young East Coaster, new to southeast Alaska. The glaciers swept up my imagination. They changed […]
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Pushed to the wall, we can power down
We seem to learn hard lessons about energy scarcity only when something big and unexpected happens. That was definitely the case this summer in Juneau, Alaska, when avalanches suddenly destroyed our power supply and threw our community headlong into an experiment in conservation. The avalanches, released 40 miles south of Juneau on April 16, were […]
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No way to run a national park
Who has the most clout in Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana? Thousands of citizens who took part in an environmental impact study, or a railroad that wants to control avalanches as cheaply as possible? If you guessed the railroad, it seems you’re right. Four years ago, avalanches halted train service for 30 hours, twice […]