The midterm elections are approaching fast, and as usual the environment is considered a Democratic issue. I had no problem with that when I was fighting strip mines in Ohio in 1973; environmentalism was synonymous with leftist politics. In the early ’80s, when a friend told me someone named Dave Foreman was forming an environmental […]
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Self-styled conservatives are the cheapest generation
I was brought up to believe that we had a moral obligation to leave our corner of the world better off than we found it. In recent years, I am haunted by the notion that the people we have elected to represent us — many of them self-styled conservatives — may be the first in […]
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These are my public lands, partner
“Somebody owns it,” my father said, sweeping his hand across the Pocono Mountains zipping by the windshield. I was a young boy when he told me this, and I can remember being puzzled by how someone could own a mountain. If you grew up in Pennsylvania as I did, you understood that just about everything […]
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Feeling crowded around here? It is!
One statistic jumped out of the morning paper and jolted my brain. The news was that America’s population will hit 300 million sometime during the third week of October. But it wasn’t that landmark figure that jarred my morning reverie. It was this: The United States population has grown from 200 million to 300 million […]
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Character in politicians is vastly overrated
It seems that a Colorado candidate for Congress, Angie Paccione, really filed for personal bankruptcy in 2001,as, according to the administrative office of the U.S. Courts, did 1,452,029 other people. Why should anyone care? Because Marilyn Musgrave, the two-term Republican incumbent Paccione is running against, has informed the world about the bankruptcy in a radio […]
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When bison gawk back, it’s smart to back down
Each time I visit Yellowstone National Park, I watch people ignore park regulations (and common sense) that say you should keep a distance of at least 25 yards from a bison. It’s almost as if folks think they’re in a giant petting zoo. Maybe the video I saw once of a man being gored by […]
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Don’t forget the cup holders
We are not addicted to oil. We are addicted to moving around and exploring what’s out there, be it the top of the mountain or the climbing wall in the new recreation center on the edge of town. The words of that explorer of the future, Captain Kirk, stay with us because he fed our […]
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Idaho’s permissiveness leads to elk on the lam
Sometime in August, 100 or more elk from an Idaho game farm escaped though a hole in the fence. The elk were from a domestic herd bred for huge horns and are known as “shooter bulls,” meaning they’re destined to be shot with bow and arrow or rifle by clients who engage in an elaborate […]
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When a gas pipeline blows, you get out fast
My family and I live in Clark, Wyo., on the Montana-Wyoming border, and though I used to tell people that I live on the edge of Yellowstone country, I now admit that I’m in an industrial zone, where things can get dangerous and go very wrong. Early in the evening of Aug. 11, a neighbor […]
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Don’t like the local rag? Start your own
My fingers pounded on the sticky keyboard. It was 2 a.m.; I’d given up drinking coffee a few hours earlier and was now chewing coffee beans chased with chocolate chips. In less than five hours, I’d make the 50-mile drive over two high mountain passes to the printer’s in Durango, in western Colorado, fretting the […]
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A simple act
No matter what time of day or night the phone rings, the voice that summons me sounds tired and desperate. But that’s not the only reason I go. I’m known there, so I seldom wait long before someone comes for me, leads me into the little room, closes the door, asks to see my ID […]
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Fire and the warming West
An Associated Press story that ran recently above the page one fold in Billings and Butte, Mont., didn’t qualify even as a brief in Baltimore, Md. No surprise, there. More people live in public housing in Baltimore than populate the states of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, combined. But it was big news on the […]
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The time I was struck by lightning
Just about everyone who has spent time in the high country has a lightning story to tell — when lightning cracked open a nearby tree, or how their hair stood on end and they got out of there. I’d been in Colorado a short time and was ignorant about everything Western when I decided to […]
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Thanks, neighbors
I took a long trip with my family this summer, six weeks away from home. Well before we left, during the school year, we found some ideal house sitters. A young couple my wife knew who needed a place during that same time and who were eager to trade some yard work and house upkeep. […]
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Subdivision and me
As we signed the papers, I knew I was a hypocrite. But every time we watched the setting sun make the red and beige sandstone glow from within, every time my dog lit out after a jackrabbit it was never going to catch, and every time I found a new potsherd in an unexpected place, […]
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Dumpster diving for frugality and fun
No, not the kind you might think. I’m not talking about extreme hunter-gatherer dumpster diving, like the Rainbow People do behind Burger King in Boulder, Colo. Mine is sartorially oriented. I’m talking about raiding the “unsalable” clothes bins outside of the Bargain Box and the Senior Center Thrift Store here in Cody, Wyo. I seem […]
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Leave only footprints, and turn the darn phone off
Hiking the other day on a national forest trail, we passed a lone woman. Cell phone glued to her ear, chattering away, she stomped by us without the usual trail civilities of at least a smile. Engrossed in the world at her ear, I doubt she even registered the beargrass blooming at her feet. Since […]
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Welcome to the conflicted West
“Welcome to the New Old West” reads the sign outside Pahrump, Nev., as you drive from Death Valley Junction along the California border. Given the meaning of these two terms, it’s a funny juxtaposition. The Old West has always meant open spaces, riding the range, cowboys and gunfire, freedom in the early 20th century sense […]
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Garage-kept in Colorado
When I moved West 10 years ago, there was one thing I never dreamed of seeing: a garage in my backyard. A mountain lion, sure, John Elway and a real cowboy. But not a garage. I once had a garage, back East, in college. It was handy for storing junk, my weights set and a […]
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How do you enter a roadless area?
How do you enter roadless lands in the West? Quietly, with a walking staff, a sketchbook, a camera? Not according to the Bush administration: It enters with a chainsaw. On Aug. 7, loggers arrived at the Mike’s Gulch timber sale in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon, fired up their chainsaws, and began cutting trees. […]