Can environmentalists and affordable housing activists in Jackson, Wyoming settle their differences? Plus, using nautical records from centuries past to model climate modeling technology, the economic gains of wildfire, Latino radio incorporates public service, and more.
Oval Intention: an essay
In the buttery early morning light at Tuolumne Meadows, my 8-year-old son and I contemplate a heap of fabric and jumbled poles. We’d woken early to claim a good campsite, but only now do I recall the difficulty of assembling my father’s ancient tent. He and my daughter are still sleeping, miles away. The instructions…
Latino radio stations connect immigrant communities
“Si, buenas tardes?” Miriam Ceja chirped into the microphone at La Nueva Mix’s studio in Glenwood Springs, Colo. It was 5 p.m., “prime drive time,” on a Wednesday evening in late March. La Nueva Mix is primarily a music station, playing Norteño ballads and other Latin American tunes. But since its debut six years ago,…
Conservation goals in Jackson Hole collide with a need for worker housing
Jackson, Wyoming As I roam around this resort town in April to meet conservationists who battle affordable housing projects, I’m struck by a tongue-in-cheek take on the argument in the Jackson Hole Daily. Smack on the front page is a photo of a pair of geese facing off against two ospreys over possession of a…
Arctic ship logs help scientists reconstruct climatic history
May they whose Lot this Log to keepBe worthy of the Task completeAnd never leave a sentence outWhich should occur the voyage about — Inscription on the cover of a 19th century ship’s logbook The morning of April 19, 1875, dawned cool and foggy in San Francisco Harbor. Aboard the United States Coast and Geodetic…
Is the Violence Against Women Act a chance for tribes to reinforce their sovereignty?
Victims’ advocates joined legislators at the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck on March 26, to discuss the recently reauthorized Violence Against Women Act. The meeting began on a celebratory note: The federal law restored to tribal courts the right to prosecute non-Indians for abusing or assaulting Native American women on Indian land — something the…
More awards for HCN
We’re honored to announce that HCN is the winner of the prestigious 2013 Utne Media Award for Environmental Coverage. “HCN stood out for its consistent reports on important stories we’re not reading anywhere else,” wrote the Utne judges. “From the effects of Twilight-inspired tourism on the Quileute Nation to half-built subdivisions at the foot of…
Stranger in a strange land
My wife and I moved to Sherwood, Ore., in 2007 to be closer to the grandkids in Portland. We attend the local Catholic Church. Much to my chagrin, the parish is almost solely Republican with an anti-abortion core. For many in the church, there is only one question to ask candidates for public office: “Are…
The affordable housing quandary
(This editor’s note accompanies an HCN magazine cover story about conservation goals in Jackson, Wyoming, colliding with the need for affordable housing.) Last summer, I moved back to my hometown of Durango, Colo., with my wife and daughters. It’s been a bittersweet experience — sweet because my family has been here for generations, and it’s…
A proud, flag-waving liberal
It really annoys me that the American flag has become synonymous with right-wing politics (“Right-wing Migration,” HCN, 5/13/13). I am an avowed “liberal,” as right-wingers derisively call me, yet I grew up with a love for flags. When my parents took me to Denmark as a child to visit the country they grew up in, I immediately…
The latest: A worrying amphibian decline
BackstoryScientists have known for years that frogs and toads are in rough shape. Nearly a third of all amphibian species face extinction — including the boreal toad, once common in high mountains around the West (“Toads on high,” HCN, 8/22/11). Climate change, habitat loss and disease are all factors in the decline; chytrid fungus, which…
An exterminator in land manager’s clothing
As an outdoorsman, environmentalist and hunter I personally find Neil LaRubbio’s notion that Ryan Counts deserves to hunt apex predators because he’s an experienced hunter a stretch (“When predator is prey,” HCN, 5/13/13). I sport fish, but I don’t feel I “deserve” to hunt and kill sharks, and I don’t fish for them. If folks…
The latest: Channel Island foxes rebound
BackstorySouthern California’s Channel Islands are home to cat-sized foxes (Urocyon littoralis) found nowhere else in the world. After DDT killed off the islands’ native bald eagles in the 1950s, golden eagles moved in, preying primarily on feral piglets but snatching up tiny foxes, too. Disease further shrunk fox populations. When the foxes were listed as…
What about race?
One word that was strangely missing from your excellent article on the conservative politics of northern Idaho was “race” (“Right-wing Migration,” HCN, 5/13/13). I have no hard data on this, but I’d guess that the increasing diversity in Southern California is a major reason a lot of right-wingers from Orange County moved to a mostly…
Birds of a (red and blue) feather flock together
I fail to see the point of “Right-wing Migration” (HCN, 5/13/13). I read it looking for evidence of some illegal, fraudulent, immoral or even unexpected behavior and found none. The only “crime” I could discern was that Republicans voted for Republican candidates. Surprise, surprise. It is perfectly understandable that a resident of Southern California would want to emigrate,…
Wildfire’s silver lining
Boulder County, on Colorado’s urban Front Range, mostly missed the building boom that hit the prairies to its east a decade ago. Any land that wasn’t protected as open space was already developed. (The county has one of the most densely developed wildland-urban interfaces in the country.) What was left was pricey and strictly regulated.…
Book review: Close to Home: Photographs
Close to Home: PhotographsRichard S. Buswell, 80 pages, hardcover: $39.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Montana photographer Richard Buswell has documented the state’s landscapes for more than four decades. In the book Close to Home, he narrows his focus, providing an unsentimental look at objects discarded from pioneer life. Many of the images are…
Wyoming digs its 10 billionth ton of coal
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wyoming digs its 10 billionth ton of coal.
Choose your political stories wisely
I have read many comments that claim HCN has a liberal bias. “Right-wing Migration” supports that viewpoint because you chose to highlight a place impacted by conservative migration and examined it like it was a negative impact (HCN, 5/13/13). Could HCN also publish a feature article about a place impacted by liberal migration, with a similar takeover…
Don’t ask her to hike
SpectacleSusan Steinberg137 pages, softcover: $14.Graywolf Press, 2013. San Francisco-based writer Susan Steinberg experiments with form and structure as she examines the roles men and women play in her arresting story collection, Spectacle. “The woman,” she writes, “is supposed to know the subtle difference between being a woman and performing one.” An unnamed woman narrates these…
Holt’s last days
Benediction: A NovelKent Haruf258 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Knopf, 2013. Death hovers over Benediction, the latest of novelist Kent Haruf’s books about the eastern Colorado town of Holt. Two earlier works are called Plainsong and Eventide, and the liturgical nuances of the titles seem fitting as this benevolent Colorado novelist bids farewell to a dying world. A…
Ray Ring on Jackson’s housing crisis
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, Nelson Harvey chats with Ray Ring about the clash between conservation goals and the need for affordable housing in Jackson, Wyoming. Thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user wvdave.geo, licensed under…