Way out on the sagebrush sea of the American West, people are embarking on an uncharted new journey called community-based conservation. Their flagship is the greater sage grouse, a bird that has narrowly avoided being added to the endangered species list because of the cooperative efforts of people around the region. The decision not to […]
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It’s the West’s turn to call the shots
I was recently invited to a seminar at a university whose thesis might be considered insulting. The American West, said the invitation, “lacks an intellectual, cultural or social presence within either the country or the continent. Eastern publishers, Eastern intellectual centers and agencies, public and private, based in Washington, D.C., still provide the authoritative voices […]
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Why Native Americans look at Lewis and Clark with different eyes
A few years ago, while filming a documentary on the Crow reservation in south-central Montana, I saw a New Yorker cartoon thumb-tacked to a door in the tribal offices. It showed two Indians sitting beside a fire, watching a rocket blast off into space. One says to the other: “Somebody told them we still have […]
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My jeans grow on trees
My family owns a timber company in Washington state, and for us, money grows on trees. Every time we buy something, we see the physical signs of our consumption in our backyard. Paying for my recent college education, for example, took about 300 log truckloads of second-growth Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock trees. A $60 […]
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Growing up is hard to do
While teaching a class in Gardiner, Mont., I asked the teenagers for adjectives to describe their lives. “Boring,” one called out, because I sensed the kid knew that teenagers were supposed to be jaded. It was a cloak he could easily don, and by pretending to be bored he wouldn’t have to work very hard. […]
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Give a child the gift of a strenuous life
It was late fall, and my 8-year-old daughter and I stood at the bottom of a brushy, 300-foot cliff and talus slope overlooking Blue Lake in southern Oregon’s Sky Lakes Wilderness. For me, it was a short climb. For a little girl much smaller than me, the hill looked downright colossal. But I knew something […]
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How to write a Christmas card — or not
There has to be something in between the kind of Christmas card that is merely signed “Happy Holidays, Carol and Frank and The Whole Funk Family,” and the five-page Christmas monograph from Jane and Bob, who express so many detailed success and so much pride in their family accomplishments that you want to stab yourself […]
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Bewitched and bewildered near Moab, Utah
If there’s a doubt in anyone’s mind about the rapidly changing rural West, look no further than the latest controversy to grip Moab, Utah. It doesn’t get much stranger than this. A few months ago, Robbie Levin, owner of Sorrel River Ranch, a luxury lodge north of Moab, applied for a cabaret license from the […]
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Western governors take aim at wounded species
Judging by their comments last week at a meeting in La Jolla, Calif., Western governors have thought a lot about the Endangered Species Act and its consequences for ranching, farming and real-estate development in their states. It became equally clear during the meeting that many governors have not thought clearly about this most far-reaching of […]
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Whatever happened to the environmental movement?
It can no longer be denied: The national environmental movement has stalled. It became glaringly obvious as the movement campaigned against George W. Bush for three years with no noticeable influence on his re-election. It’s proven more subtly by the fact that Congress has passed almost no significant environmental laws since 1980, and by now, […]
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A sleeping green giant may yet awake
Consider the matter of Row v. Wade, and no, that’s not a misspelling. We’re talking fishing here, and the never-ending debate over whether the best way to catch fish is from a boat or while walking through the water. What does this have to do with the re-election of President George W. Bush? As any […]
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Sneak fees stalk our public lands
Would you still call your town library “public” if a private corporation managed the books your taxes paid for, then charged you a fee to borrow them? Thanks to a provision sneaked into the recently passed federal spending bill, we may face that question about our public lands. Just hours before senators were expected to […]
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What do you do in that little town?
Near the top of the list of dumb questions I get asked is this: “So, what do you do there?” This generally follows my telling anyone who has never been to Logan, Utah, that I live in Logan, Utah. In general, though, it is a question asked by those who mistakenly believe they live somewhere […]
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An artist’s residency, unplugged
The Aspen Guard Station is a log cabin in an aspen grove in the San Juan National Forest, 12 miles north of Mancos in southern Colorado. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the guard station once housed fire crews. Today, the cabin is home to another kind of seasonal worker: writers and […]
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Send the coyotes to Congress
At last, there are coyotes in the capital. The first confirmed sighting of a coyote in Washington, D.C., was reported in September, and rumors of new sightings have circulated briskly ever since. What a relief. All we Westerners have to do is get the critters elected. These adventuresome D.C. coyotes, first spotted in the relative […]
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Now that we’ve clear-cut the Forest Service…
I first met the U.S. Forest Service in 1967, when I helped build a log cabin at 9,600 feet on the Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado. The idea that I was part owner of 300,000 square miles of beautiful land intoxicated me. We became so drunk on the land that in 1974, we moved […]
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Go West, Democrats, in the path of Harry Reid
Can a teetotaling Mormon from a busted mining town in Nevada lead Democrats to the Promised Land of national power? This much is certain: Democrats rallied behind Harry Reid in the hope that he can take them through purgatory —or is it hell? — as minority leader of the 44-member Democratic caucus in the U.S. […]
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The ecology and politics of fear
Here’s some good news: In Yellowstone National Park, the cottonwood groves are thriving. Cottonwoods are a key element in the Yellowstone ecosystem, but not so long ago it seemed that they were doomed by dense herds of elk that clustered along the park’s rivers and browsed the trees so heavily that no young saplings survived. […]
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Terrible choices now confront the people of Oregon
On Nov. 2, when Oregonians closed the book on the most forward-looking planning law in the nation, they did not just amend a statute, they changed the ethos of a state that had for 30 years celebrated open spaces, greenways and livable communities over development. And they likely started a copycat war throughout the West […]
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A lesson in consensus from contentious Idaho
I can’t get too worked up about the national election’s impact on Western land issues. I don’t live in a state where oil and gas development is roaring through publicly owned lands the way it’s doing in Wyoming and Colorado. Democrats still have enough votes in Idaho’s Senate to stop legislation that fundamentally changes the […]