Thirty years (and one day) ago, Mount St. Helens blew its top. Or rather, its side. After months of heightened seismic activity, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake caused the flank of the mountain to suddenly fall away. The landslide — the largest ever recorded — slammed into Spirit Lake at the foot of the volcano. A […]
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Happy birthday, Glacier NP
When I was younger, I was lucky to visit Glacier National Park in Northern Montana, which today becomes a centenarian. By now, my memories of my family’s visit are few, but distinct: Gliding on a boat over the glassine reflections of glacier-shouldered crags; walking a trail past incredibly docile, shaggy mountain goats; seeing an black […]
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An Arizona Solution
Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from New York or Pennsylvania went to better schools and boasted more impressive resumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault […]
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Air fungus
Each year, in early May, a pilot and a researcher fly low, long hours over the Oregon coast range, sweeping back and forth in transects two miles apart. Below the small aircraft, a rugged, uneven carpet of mature and regenerating forest unrolls: a landscape scarred by logging, but still dominated by Douglas fir. They’re in […]
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Utah Republicans dump incumbent senator
It’s almost certain that Utah will have a new U.S. Senator next year. Three-term incumbent Robert Bennett sought a fourth term, but despite his generally conservative voting record and endorsementa from Mitt Romney and the National Rifle Association, he didn’t get enough votes at the state Republican convention to get on the primary […]
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That old-time separation
Today is the first Thursday in May, which makes it the National Day of Prayer, established by the U.S. Congress in 1952. A federal judge in Wisconsin has found it an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the federal government, but the decision is under appeal and so the events will go forward. It […]
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Refinery blues
The Sinclair Wyoming Refinery’s clumsy environmental record continues to stumble: Last week, some 80 dead birds, most of them western grebes, were found in a wastewater pond laced with oil spilled from an undetermined source in the refinery. The accident is the latest in a spate of spills (see our story, “Sinclair flare up“) at […]
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A water hog, redeemed
“A big tamarisk can suck 73,000 gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bounty, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long.” So begins Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter,” a short story set in a dystopic future when humans must fight tamarisk for every drop of water. The story might be made […]
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Oh vaulted ancestors!
The Granite Mountain Record Vault is a veritable temple, a slightly more natural- and secure-looking version of the one in Salt Lake City, not far away. A spiritual glow even radiates from the arched entrance to its tunnels (at least in this promotional photo). But this vault holds way more folks than the spired House […]
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It’s a skunk-eat-pelican-eat-trout world out there
Each spring, on the shores of Nevada’s Pyramid Lake, fishermen in waders stand 50 feet out in the water, on stepladders, casting long, narrow loops for huge Lahontan trout. They look a little like Kodiak bears lined up on an Alaskan river. But, these men aren’t the only fishers around. American white pelicans glide long, […]
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Myths about myths
You’ll probably soon hear about the “five myths about green energy,” if you haven’t already. They’re the talking points of a book to be published this week, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He wrote […]
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Next stop: water on tap
This weekend, thousands of Navajos will pile their trucks with 55-gallon drums and drive to the nearest watering station. If they’re lucky, the lines will be short, the coin-operated water pipes will work, and they’ll return home with enough to drink, wash and cook for another week. Hauling water is a common chore in the […]
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More than a starter castle
Tom Chapman, the land developer whom just about everybody loves to hate, is at it again. Chapman’s specialty is buying inholdings — private land surrounded by public land — and then either developing them, or threatening to develop them until he gets a good deal. He’s been the subject of many articles in […]
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No s#%@w
One look at the Oregon landscape, and you wouldn’t suppose “squaw” is a dirty word. Roughly 130 geographic locations in the state are labeled with the S-word. S- creeks, S- mountains, S- lakes and S- peaks — it’s found all over the place (and not just in Oregon, as HCN has reported). This June, however, […]
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Women writing the West
Over the weekend, I drove to Denver for The Association of Writers and Writing Program’s annual conference, which assumed a bit of a Western theme this year. Poets and writers overran the downtown convention center, sampling from a myriad of readings and panels. One of these focused on the challenges women writing west of the […]
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Limiting Las Vegas
The conclusion of a new report by the Sonoran Institute—that Las Vegas’ water supply can’t keep up with its interminable appetite for growth—isn’t particularly surprising. But it is timely. The recent pummeling Las Vegas took from the recession presented the ballooning city with an opportunity to catch its breath. As the Las Vegas Sun puts […]
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The Trouble with Wilbur
There’s nothing like a feral pig to blur the line between free food and pest management. Days after the Arizona Daily Star published a map showing feral pig populations around the state (along with a note that Arizona doesn’t require licenses for hunting feral pigs), a dozen hunting parties converged on one of the hot […]
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Best. Conference. Ever.
Ahem. The Eagle has landed. At approximately fourteen hundred hours today, an eighteen-wheeler rolled through town here in Paonia, Colorado, right past the front windows of High Country News, on a curious mission. Naturally, we went out to investigate. And so we discovered … the ConferenceBike. Pause, please, and meditate on this photo.
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Oh, deer
Living where “the deer and the antelope roam” may be fine in theory, but I’d prefer that the roaming happen somewhere besides my small back yard. Alas, this winter and spring, muley doe and two fawns appear back there with some regularity — two or three times a week. It’s not as though […]
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Public lands “blackmailer” returns
Loathed by government officials, recreationists and environmentalists alike, Colorado developer Tom Chapman is at it again. His latest deal exemplifies his typical modus operandi: buy inholdings in remote backcountry, threaten to develop them, and get big payouts from federal agencies desperate to protect pristine public lands. Now he’s purchased 103 acres of mining claims in […]