California’s Salton Sea is at a crossroads, but whether it dries up and blows away or is restored and rejuvenated, the future does not look bright for its resident renegades, retirees and recluses.
It’s not a bluff
While Randy Udall has some valid issues, in that it’s reasonable for the state to benefit from mining its natural resources, especially to pay for infrastructure, his logic breaks down when he tries to make the connection that oil companies’ high profits are due to gas production in Colorado (HCN, 2/04/08). Most of the companies…
Men, machines, memories
The major characters in Five Skies are men at work and men on the run. It’s not surprising that they are men of few words as well. Art Key, a 40-something Hollywood stunt engineer fleeing a guilty conscience, and Ronnie Panelli, a 19-year-old petty thief dodging the law, join aging ranch hand Darwin Gallegos for…
Remembering Rrrrrip City!
When I first picked up the anthology Red Hot and Rollin’, I turned to my husband, a native Oregonian. “So, do you remember the Blazer championship of ’77?” I asked. “Remember it?!” he spluttered. “It was one of the pivotal events of my life!” My husband grew up in one of the 96 percent of…
Heard Around the West
MONTANA Karen Craver might have one of the toughest jobs in the West. For three years, she’s been a rural mail carrier in sparsely populated northern Montana, close to Canada. “Some places up here,” she says, “it’s 10 miles between mailboxes.” Every Tuesday and Thursday, Craver hits the rocky road that takes her north of…
Don’t write off this story yet
You know you have been working somewhere for a long time when your colleagues start coming to you for “institutional knowledge.” On the one hand, it’s kind of flattering to be the person who knows why the toilet sometimes clogs up (our connection to the sewer line has always been susceptible to debris dams), and…
Two weeks in the West
Las Vegas’ overall ambience, not to mention those jug-sized cocktails, tends to breed a certain lasciviousness among its human inhabitants and visitors. Turns out that the same lust is infecting the mollusks of southern Nevada. Quagga mussels invaded the East and Midwest before hitching their way westward on promiscuous boats, and they were discovered in…
A Superior story
The article about Superior, Ariz., was well-researched and beautifully written (HCN, 2/18/08). My husband has many family connections with that area, so we have visited over the years and wondered how things would turn out for those old mining towns. It always seemed to me that Superior had a great future as a place for…
Working landscapes are the key
High Country News has brought to the fore a critical environmental quandary: Should we protect species by any means necessary in the face of climate change or let nature take its course (HCN, 2/04/08)? There is another element of our response to climate change that deserves greater emphasis: management of working landscapes. A “let nature…
A new land ethic
While it is gratifying to see some coverage of the potential problems our current wildlife preservation systems face in the presence of climate change, there are some continuing blind spots that should be pointed out (HCN, 2/04/08). First, as was noted in a 2002 HCN interview with conservation biologist Michael Soule, the “pristine ecosystem” that…
Eight is just fine
What a depressing letters page (HCN, 2/04/08)! Mr. Gardner speaks of an unsustainable population, Bagley takes a cheap shot at large families, and Williams is just plain mad at “enormous families.” These sentiments are intolerant and hateful. They remind me of Einstein’s words: “The most important decision you have to make is whether you live…
We’re in a land of Lincoln
The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth isn’t until Feb. 12, 2009, but we could easily spend the next year considering how our 16th president defined the American West. Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, never traveled west of his adopted state of Illinois. Yet he, and the Republican Party he helped found, took a deep…
Staying put
Lately my cat, Daisy, has me thinking about Al Gore. Daisy’s not as young as she used to be. She lazes most hours on the rug in front of the woodstove, snuggled inside the cardboard lid to a ream of paper from Office Depot. The lid is now festooned with a homemade quilt draped over…
The People of the Sea
California’s Salton Sea could dry up and die, or be fixed and developed. Either way, its renegades, recluses, ruffians and retirees will lose.
Dear friends
VISITORS The snow may have kept some folks from visiting us here, but Rob and Annie Edward stopped by between storms and gray wolf education presentations. Rob is the director of carnivore restoration for the nonprofit carnivore advocacy group Sinapu, which recently merged with Forest Guardians to create WildEarth Guardians. Annie’s “day job” allows her…
CSI: Critter Crime
An Oregon laboratory thwarts wildlife crime around the world
Havana goes West
Conservative Western Republicans embrace the Cuban cause
I was a closet environmentalist
NAME Roger Muggli Age 59 Vocation Farmer/Feed Plant Operator Elected Position Secretary of the Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District (third generation) Handle Water Dog (H2OK9) Home Base Family farm east of Miles City, Montana Life Passion Water He Says “Wouldn’t it be grand if our kids and grandkids could float down the Yellowstone and still…