When I first sold my family’s vegetables at farmers’ markets in 1980, Slow Food hadn’t been born, and the phrase “local foods” was not yet in the lingo. The word “organic,” however, was in vogue, and our customers always asked you the same question: Are you organic? Nine years old and barefoot, I tried not […]
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The West comes closer to speaking with a regional voice
Recent developments have given new impetus to the idea of a coordinated Rocky Mountain West presidential primary in 2008. Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman has asked that state’s Legislature to set aside $850,000 to enable Utah to hold an early presidential preference primary. Meanwhile, a special commission of the Democratic National Committee has recommended changes […]
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What one small town owes to the gas industry
Miracles are performed in the gas-drilling fields of Wyoming every day by roustabout and frac crews, drillers, hot-shot crews, water-truck drivers, office managers and others at all levels. No one in Sublette County — no rancher, waitress, sheriff’s deputy, newspaper editor, Bureau of Land Management employee — works harder, and we ought to respect that. […]
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What the gas industry owes us
First, the gas industry should admit that it is changing Pinedale, and not all the change is good. Don’t tell us we should be happy to have industry and the jobs and money that come with it. Certainly, gas exploration and drilling have made our economy stronger than ever, and finally, many of us are […]
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Someday, chickens will come home to roost
From the air, part of New Mexico’s Carson National Forest looks like a spider web that’s been carved into the landscape. Here on the 33,000-acre Jicarilla District, more than 700 gas wells and a maze of over 400 miles of associated roads crisscross the land. While companies have been leasing this New Mexico forest for […]
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A wish for the new year: A Scrooged Bush
One of my favorite stories of the Holiday season is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. What could be more inspiring than that moment when Ebenezer Scrooge, after enduring the long dark night of the soul, wakes up a new man? Scrooge’s transformation from a fearful, angry tightwad to a joyful gift-giver always fills me […]
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Arson on Vail Mountain returns to the news
Arson is a difficult crime to prove, so it’s no surprise that the federal government only recently named two suspects in the 1998 fires that caused $12 million in damage atop the Vail ski area. The 28-year-old suspects, who both grew up in Eugene, Ore., have not been charged, let alone found guilty, of anything […]
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Oil shale, our feel-good rock
Oil shale has made big news this past year. Congress has ordered the leasing of federal oil shale lands, and would-be developers are reporting advances in both conventional retorting and innovative, in-situ extraction technologies. Yet somehow I don’t get a warm, fuzzy feeling that oil shale is going to help me out at the gas […]
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Why one hunter is fed up with the NRA
I am a hunter. I care deeply about our hunting heritage and our ability to pass it on. Like most hunters, I consider organizations that work on behalf of hunting my friends, and those that work against hunting my adversaries. Like most hunters, I am confused when the lines become blurred. And today the lines […]
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Welcome, podnah, to the Westernized West
A hotel in my town has rechristened its newly remodeled pub the “Silver Spur Lounge.” I’m sure they just grabbed the last available piece of cowboy mythology that hadn’t been snapped up by someone else in the local tourism industry. But the name still has me puzzled: What exactly about the reality of upscale downtown […]
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Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree
“I will not kill another living tree for Christmas,” announced a waitress at a restaurant I frequent. It is a common misconception that cutting a fir at Christmas is killing a tree that will otherwise live. “Christmas trees are grown to be cut,” I said sagely. “That is their reason for being.” Then I recounted […]
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Bet on Las Vegas for Western solutions
Las Vegas is a funny place to find solutions to the woes of Western cities, but in southern Nevada, the phenomenal growth of the last 20 years has spawned innovative ways to solve the problems of Western cities. Las Vegas has all the problems of a healthy economy — growth, sprawl, air pollution, traffic congestion, […]
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The trouble with the Endangered Species Act is us
With House approval of his “Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act” last September, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., got a step closer to his career goal of eradicating the Endangered Species Act. Pombo, a developer posing as a rancher posing as an advocate of the public good, proclaims that the 32-year-old law is “broken” and a […]
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Camping out at home
The first heating bill I got was for October, and it jumped from summer levels right up to what I was paying mid-winter last year. Mind you, I didn’t even light the furnace pilot light until Oct.10, and because the weather was nice, we only kicked in the thermostat on a handful of days, less […]
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Pombo’s plan to privatize the West must be stopped
What is it, exactly, that makes the West special? There are certainly many answers to that question, but perhaps the one that Westerners would give more than any other is our “wide open spaces.” Despite much development, there is still open space in the West: space to hike, to hunt, to breathe free, to escape […]
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We need to store fat from the gas-feeding frenzy
Every fall, black bears enter a ravenous state in which they will do almost anything for food. Biologists call it hyperphagia — the time of super-eating. Bears in hyperphagia can get into trouble if their search for calories leads them to our backyards or to garbage cans behind the local diner. We Westerners have also […]
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When hungry bears drop in for lunch
It was a few falls ago when I came home one late afternoon, only to find the floor covered in broken glass and pieces of pottery. It looked like a serious and not untalented artist had been at work. The pieces lay arranged in grotesque fashion, jutting up like mountaintops above a valley floor of […]
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Wheelchairs and wilderness can coexist
Sometimes, life can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. The biggest change in my life came seven years ago, when I was backcountry skiing in the Hoover Wilderness near Yosemite. I missed a turn on a steep icy slope and fell into a rocky gully. In that ugly tumble I crushed my spinal […]
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It’s not whether you win or lose…
The trouble with running for public office is the very real possibility that you will lose the race publicly. I considered this as I declared my candidacy for my small town’s city council. But there were three seats up for grabs, and I figured there would be a good chance I might run unopposed. When […]
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It’s déjà vu all over again in Iraq
The wars in Vietnam and Iraq aren’t the same, of course, but there’s an eerie feeling of sameness to what’s happening now and what happened in the early 1970s. Only this time, it’s a conservative political coalition that’s crumbling. In 1971, when I moved to rural Wallowa County in Oregon, a national liberal coalition held […]