Wotr

“Leash your dog, Wilke.” The phone message was innocuous enough. The only problem being I didn’t know the man’s name or phone number, and five minutes earlier he’d threatened to kill my dog. Our first encounter was last spring. I walked my dog, Ricky, through the block of condo subdivisions west of my home, as […]

I am not just marrying a man; I am marrying a town. In my first, brief marriage, my husband and I were both newcomers to the Alaskan town where we spent our married life. The locals weren’t particularly invested in us. Instead, they waited with the patience of the seasoned to see if we could […]

The debate over the artist Christo’s latest scheme – he wants to canopy part of the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado in 2014 — shouldn’t simply be about art. Rather, it should be viewed as a jobs proposal, and on that ground I’d say, Why not? Certainly, Christo is an artist, maybe even the century’s […]

As I write this in March, it’s raining. A moist flow has set in, and we’re looking forward to a spring full of wildflowers: Indian paint brush, sego lilies, penstemon. It’s a wet cycle in the high desert of southern Utah. Not only is it raining, we’ve had more snow this winter than we’ve seen […]

It’s not only war heroes who get honored in the West with lasting memorials. When prodigal son Dalton Trumbo finally returned to his hometown of Grand Junction, Colo., he arrived on Main Street in a bronze bathtub. After four years, despite rain and snow, he’s still there, and some residents still can’t figure out if […]

The most expensive and protracted battle over an endangered species is at last approaching its day of reckoning in Portland, Ore.  Sometime this spring, federal District Court Judge James Redden will decide the terms of a recovery plan for some two dozen endangered salmon stocks in the Columbia River Basin. Like the famous Boldt Decision […]

I drink water straight from the tap. Generally, if someone tells me something is safe, I accept that it probably is. So I’d love to be relaxed about the proposed Piñon Ridge uranium mill just outside of Naturita, Colo., but I can’t. The mill, whose permit was recently approved by the state’s health department, is […]

One day last week it was cold — really cold — but not quite record-breaking. The weatherman reported that the record for the day was set back in 1979: 31 degrees below zero. I checked my old ranch notebook, and yes, 1979 was quite a winter. We’d kept the cattle on the range in Wyoming […]

What will your state’s be?

Bring me a higher love