The healthiest wild lands in the nation cannot be found on recreation maps. The bushes in these secret spots aren’t littered with old toilet paper or empty beer cans; there are no crowds, no loud music and no admission fees. No motels, camp sites, toilets, souvenirs or asphalt paths. No gas stations, no boat ramps, […]
Wotr
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The hunters called — they want their deer back
Maybe it was just a case of bad timing. First, we learn that mule deer have declined 60 percent on Wyoming’s Pinedale Anticline between 2001 and 2009. That’s not much of a surprise. It’s been evident for some time that deer and deer hunters were going to be the biggest losers in this gas play. […]
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Hunting and gathering in the modern era
He wakes before dawn, moves silently from his bed. He washes and shaves according to ritual, anoints himself with powders and lotions, some to mask scent, others to enhance it. He dresses in his hunting outfit, adjusts his shirt, brushes dust from his pants. He eats a light breakfast of fruit and cereal, not enough […]
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Mexican wolves, still strangers in a strange land
With the opening of their holding pens 12 years ago, wolves stepped into their historic home on the Southwestern desert for the first time in over 50 years. So began the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf into southern Arizona and New Mexico. It was a culminating moment for the state and federal agencies that […]
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Our small town welcomes its newest neighbor
It was the first corporate grand opening this valley had ever seen. On Nov. 4, a Family Dollar store opened here in the isolated mountain town of Penasco, N.M., between Taos and Santa Fe. Since the recession hit, the retail chain has expanded rapidly across the West, targeting small, low-income communities with few downtown amenities. […]
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Hoover Dam: marvel and folly
Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt declared Hoover Dam — then called Boulder Dam — “a marvel of the 20th century.” But I predict that when the dam turns 100 in 2035, no one will be celebrating what now appears to be a 20th century folly. The third decade of the 20th century and the […]
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Voting at the dump
In my bluish precinct in thoroughly red Idaho, we vote at the dump. We troop to a doublewide manufactured home that serves as the landfill office, out by the edge of the Caribou National Forest. “Saves the middleman,” my late husband liked to say. Our whole county makes a blue showing in most elections, thanks […]
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When voting, listen to the grass
When I say I’m from the High Plains, people often tell me how bored they were on their last drive through eastern Colorado or Kansas. I agree. The Plains are boring now that most of the land has been farmed into a drab patchwork of corn, soybeans and wheat. But no land was ever as […]
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The way it is for some people
Recently, I returned from a second visit to my dentist, who works “en el otro lado” – the other side. I live in Arizona, so that means across the border, in Mexico. Emilia Saenz is a fine dentist, but her assistant, Jose, a gracious young man, is even finer, as far as I’m concerned. That’s […]
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Second best is OK with me
My wife and I have had the good fortune to visit some of the iconic landscapes of the Colorado Plateau in the years BG — before guidebooks. Back in those days, you could enjoy an hour’s solitude anywhere in the Escalante River’s side canyons. We recently returned to an old favorite in Utah, a colorful […]
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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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Landlocked in New Mexico
It covers only 16,000 acres, but eastern New Mexico’s Sabinoso Wilderness could easily provide the backdrop for a spaghetti Western movie. Scrub juniper and cactus shade cow plop among the clumps of buffalo grass and blue grama, while stark cliffs, canyons and deeply cleft trenches loom in the distance, looking a lot like the handiwork […]
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Stealing the West, bone by bone
Early morning sunrise washed over the Colorado National Monument outside Grand Junction as I headed for a boulder-strewn knoll. There, 110 years ago, paleontologist Elmer Riggs discovered a previously unknown dinosaur that we now call Brachiosaurus. When it was alive some 150 million years ago, the plant-eating dinosaur measured 75 feet or more from teeth […]
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What we don’t admit about wildfire
Arizona had no big wildfires burning in early September, so in Flagstaff where I live, all eyes turned toward Boulder. The most destructive fire in Colorado history was raging out of control and we all wanted to watch. We couldn’t resist. I think it’s in our DNA. The internal combustion engine, electricity, the Internet — […]
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A wild area gets a reprieve
Lovers of wild open spaces in northwest Colorado recently received some long-awaited great news. The Bureau of Land Management’s Little Snake Field Office announced that it would close 77,000 acres of the magnificent Vermillion Basin to oil and gas development. The agency’s decision came as a result of a well-publicized public process. Nonetheless, Moffat County […]
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The problem of Western water is not what you think
The dirty little secret about Western water is that water conservation is a hoax, or at best a waste of time. When we conserve water by using less, we don’t save it for the health of the watershed or put it aside in any way; we simply make it available for someone else to consume, […]
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Live fee or die
We grumbled, but paid the nearly 50 percent fee increase for registering our motor vehicle in Colorado. And we also paid the registration fee for our camp trailer, which had nearly doubled. I felt as helpless as Jack in the Beanstalk, when he hid under a bucket listening to a giant stomp around shouting, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM.” […]