When Dan Wasil plucks a white package of “Fresh Atlantic Salmon” from the grocery store cooler, he hardly glances at its label. “I assume that it comes from the Atlantic,” says Wasil, a fundraiser who has lived in Portland for over 30 years. While he says he’s careful to check labels to see if chicken […]
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Once more into the breach: Dams could fall in the Northwest
Many in the Northwest thought they’d killed the idea of breaching four dams on the Snake River in Washington when they convinced the Clinton administration to pass on it, and then elected George Bush president. They celebrated too soon. On May 7, U.S. District Judge James Redden in Portland threw out the salmon protection plan […]
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The West loses an unsentimental guide
Historian David Lavender was the best sort of guide a traveler in the West could have: A quiet man with a wry sense of humor, he was passionate about this region, refused to romanticize it and was happy to share his knowledge if asked. He was never sentimental about the West, writing about cowboys: “Although […]
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Real ranches don’t have “ette” in their name
Listen up, folks, here’s a vocabulary lesson from a rancher and writer who’s tired of bad writing distorting Western history. A ranch is not just any patch of rural ground, and the saying, “All hat, no cattle,” is more than a joke. It’s true most ranchers prefer not to reveal the size of their places, […]
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Why I fight: The coming gas explosion in the West
Here’s what I once believed: that if the President knew about the damage done to our land by the energy industry, the damage would cease. I once believed that if you could show that industry can extract gas without damaging land right near us — as it does on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, and […]
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Green Republicans: It’s not an oxymoron
In the seven years since I co-founded Republicans for Environmental Protection, officially known as REP America, I have answered two questions more often than any others: “Isn’t Republicans for Environmental Protection an oxymoron?” And, “If you care so much about conservation and environmental protection, why don’t you become a Democrat?” The first one is easy […]
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Why Greens need blue blazers
One of my childhood friends, Karl Warkomski, is the first and only elected Green Party member in ultra-right-wing Orange County, Calif. Orange Country — home to the mega-hawk and former congressman “B2 Bob” Dornan — is a place where people get misty-eyed remembering the Reagan presidency. So how in the world did Karl get elected? […]
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A Hopi woman warrior is honored in Arizona
America treats today’s soldiers with the kind of respect that Vietnam veterans could only dream about. Such nearly universal support — even from those who opposed the war against Iraq — shows how much the nation has learned from its mistakes. Efforts to honor one fallen soldier from Arizona show a refreshing desire to right […]
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No way to run Wyoming
Imagine, for a moment, that some kooky politicians in Washington, D.C.. decided they wanted to invade Iraq with feather dusters . Now, imagine a colonel in the Army warned them that this was a bad idea, and they need would need real tools of war, helicopters and tanks and such, to execute such a plan. […]
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With its back to the wall, California turns to the sea
It’s going to be a hot, feverish summer, even more so because water supplies are pinched unusually tight. Nowhere is that as true as in California. On New Year’s day, Interior Secretary Gale Norton rudely weaned the state off its long-running overuse of Colorado River water, slashing access to the river by 15 percent. Now, […]
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In Iraq, there’s hope of restoring the Garden of Eden
Watching the chaotic aftermath of repression andwar in Iraq hurts my heart. As an antidote, I conjure a vision of hope: a shimmering expanse of water and life that may once again grace the Iraqi desert. Until a decade ago, southern Iraq boasted one of the world’s largest wetlands, the Mesopotamia Marshes, almost 7,800 square […]
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Sometimes, it’s trout that have to be killed
Having written for and about trout anglers for 33 years, I’ve repeatedly admonished them for their lack of what Aldo Leopold, sire of wildlife management, called an “ecological conscience.” Too often a “trout is a trout,” and where it came from and what it’s displacing doesn’t matter. So I am astonished and delighted to see […]
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On the road, where everything falls away
There is nothing like being on a road trip, especially a Western road trip. On the road, anything is possible. The rest of life falls away into another dimension. If it isn’t a frontier of possibility, it’s at least a paved ribbon of it. On a trip years ago, I remember stopping in Truth or […]
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Bruce Babbitt and I have seen the past, and it no longer works
“That was the biggest bunch of BS I’ve ever heard,” complained one man. His friend agreed: “Yeah, I’ll bet neither Babbitt nor Williams have ever been near a timber mill.” Those comments were overheard as the two young men heard left a University of Montana auditorium after I’d introduced former Interior Secretary of the Interior […]
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He taught us to see — but not the whole picture
One of the most celebrated photographers in American history began his career by snapping the kind of family vacation pictures that betray no hint of visual genius. This should hearten any teenager whose early accomplishments with pen, camera, guitar or paintbrush seem inadequate to support dreams of artistic triumph. Ansel Adams was 14 when he […]
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Like it or not, Utah’s controversial monument is here to stay
I visited the spectacular Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, when it was still a raw wound in the body politic of southern Utah. As I talked to people in the scattered towns around the 1.7 million acre-monument, I found deep-seated anger and mistrust. One county commissioner told me President Clinton cynically designated the monument […]
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New Urbanism is just growth by another name
It’s hard to tell whether New Urbanism best fits the definition of a cult or a conspiracy. It has elements of both. Either way, my advice is not to drink the Kool-Aid. Embracing a politically correct excuse for growth is suicide for the West’s small towns. New Urbanism is the name given to a collection […]
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The West’s negligent landlord
Western Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis occupies a congressional seat that until 1972 was the most powerful in the West. It was owned by the late Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat, who chaired the House Interior Committee in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the federal government was pouring billions into the the Interior West. Federal agencies […]
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A California treasure shouldn’t hide itself
Four years ago, it seemed that one of the fiercest battles over West Coast timber had ended with the public’s purchase of the 7,000-acre Headwaters redwood forest in Northern California. But those trees continue to fuel controversy, this time over whether people should be allowed into the cathedral-like ancient groves located some 200 miles north […]
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A message from women, witnesses in black
Today, in the short space of one hour, I was cursed, yelled at and repeatedly shown the finger. One man pulled down his pants and stuck his rear out of a car window. Why? Simply because, together with seven other women, I donned all black clothing and a veil and stood silently on a sidewalk […]