“It was a Superfund site,” my friend Nina told me, joking about a house she and her husband nearly bought in the crunched real estate market of the greater Yellowstone area. At first they loved the house and its affordable price. Then an inspector informed them that the building was full of asbestos-laden vermiculite from […]
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A South Dakota hero has a great fall
I was probably the only 3-year-old in South Dakota to own a “Janklow Sucks” t-shirt during Bill Janklow’s second of four terms as governor. Janklow served two terms from 1978 to 1986 and two more from 1994 to 2002; in 2002 we elected him to represent our state — which has fewer people than metro […]
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Colorado’s thirsty suburbs get the state into trouble
Denver’s southern suburbs have a rich, new-car smell. Emboldened by information-technology employers, Douglas County during the ‘90s was the nation’s fastest-growing county. It also ranked among the nation’s elite in per capita income, education and other measures of affluence. In short, this region of sleek and slinky subdivisions looks and feels an awful lot like […]
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A grizzly attack that was bound to happen
One of the most egotistical notions humans have is that we can “commune” with unpredictable wild animals. News headlines over the last couple of weeks have revealed the depth of our folly. During Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas nightclub act, a tiger turned on trainer Roy Horn. Doctors still don’t know if he will survive. […]
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Some issues are uncomfortably gray
My opposition to the Holcim Company’s proposal to burn more than one million tires every year at a cement plant at the headwaters of the Missouri River started as a no-brainer. I have three children growing up downwind of that plant. I float those rivers. Several friends work with the advocacy group, Montanans Against Toxic […]
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We need a sensible approach to fight wildfires
It’s the sweet time of year in northern Montana, late drying-out summer, easing into the rains of autumn, and in the soft low green hills of the Yaak Valley, on the Kootenai National Forest, the mornings are tinged, not unpleasantly, with the smell of wood smoke. Objects take on a golden glow, illuminated by the […]
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A conservation elder celebrates 101
Perhaps all standoffs between so-called environmentalists and industry are clashes of mythic proportion, but the unfolding story of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seems particularly so, a world-class drama whose players include migratory birds, caribou, polar bears, native Alaskans, eco-activists, oil executives and politicians. The outcome of this mythic tale is yet unscripted. If not […]
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Guts and grit will still get you to America
The most recent illegal migrant I’ve met was named Marvín Leonel Contreras. I spotted the 22-year-old during an early morning hike in the Santa Cruz River valley below my home in Rio Rico, Ariz. He was limping up the center of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. When he spotted me, he waved and smiled. He […]
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Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept.11, 2001, were allowed to occur because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so much […]
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How to dis-credit yourself without really trying
I made my first telephone call in the 1950s by turning a crank on a wooden telephone box. Some neighbors on the party line always listened; in that small ranching community of rural South Dakota, everybody knew everybody’s business. Perhaps for that reason, most of us dealt honestly with each other. We paid cash for […]
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A rational response to wildfires
As summer weather breaks in the West and ushers in a cool and moist fall, all of us are breathing a sigh of relief. At the same time we cannot avoid being haunted by the question of whether there is something we ought to be doing to reduce the wildfire threat. Any rational response to […]
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Run before dawn and other advice from a Native American elder
Born in 1896, Margaret King sits on her cot like a stained glass sculpture. If you parted the Bluebird Flour sack curtains from the window of her HUD house and held all 60 pounds of her up to the sun, purples, reds, blues, yellows and browns would stream through her parchment skin. Her ferocious eyes […]
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Some trees inspire true love
This is a love story about a small number of scientists and some pine trees in North America. I do not know if any hugging has taken place between the trees and the scientists, but tears of loss have been shed. Biologist Diana Tomback got to know the trees as a young graduate student, and […]
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Hell’s mountains are in the Northern Rockies
If Hell has mountains, they must look like the Northern Rockies. As my fire spotter and I fly an insignificantly small airplane over our territory in western Montana, we weave through brown tendrils of wind-shredded smoke that curl around granite peaks. Sudden explosions of dark ash rise into the air above stands of trees as […]
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Free Hetch Hetchy!
To the members of a nonprofit group called Restore Hetch Hetchy, one solution to overcrowding in Yosemite Valley in California seems obvious: Create a duplicate of that enormously popular attraction, complete with its own spectacular waterfalls and soaring granite cliffs. The proposal would not require a team of theme-park engineers to execute since a natural […]
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Small farmers seek refuge in the city
Squeezed out of their traditional outlets by larger growers and global competition, Oregon’s small farmers are seeking refuge in the cities. They’re selling directly to customers at farmer’s markets–and, in the process, helping urbanites reconnect with the source of their food. “This is the farmer’s only hope, the only way we can make a living […]
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A letter to a rancher named George Bush
Dear Mr. President: We’re back in an energy boom in parts of the West, and this made me wonder how a rancher like yourself might feel if geologists discovered an enormous pocket of natural gas beneath your spread in Texas. What if the story got out, and the press corps suddenly appeared at your Western […]
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T-shirt etiquette confounds and confuses
“Just grab a shirt and let’s go,” my girlfriend said. But I hesitated. We were going whitewater rafting with her mother, and the top T-shirt in my drawer proclaimed its wearer an “Uneducated Idiot.” Somehow it didn’t seem a wise message. The moment has resonated with me, in part because I live near Yellowstone National […]
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The Devil’s Highway was a road to God’s Country
Route 666 is fading in the distance. That stepson of the Mother Road –Route 66 –is headed toward oblivion. That’s a shame, because for me, like plenty of pavement pilgrims who arrived in the West over the last half-century in RVs, SUVs or astride Harleys, the Devil’s Highway was the road into God’s Country. U.S. […]
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From Washington, D.C., comes a new spoils system
Under the guise of flexibility, the Bush administration is quietly engineering a corporate takeover of government. President Bush has ordered all federal agencies to solicit bids from private corporations to replace 425,000 civil service jobs by the next election. That’s nearly one-quarter of the entire permanent federal workforce. The National Park Service has been one […]