Sometimes it can’t be helped, that long drive across the West, rolling the odometer like a slot machine that promises to pay off with just one more spin. The gas gauge hovers around “half” and it looks like you’ll get there without stopping again in the middle of who knows where. Home is all you […]
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Yellowstone should keep out polluting and intrusive snowmobiles
In 2003, Yellowstone will celebrate a centennial. It’s been 100 years since President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the famous stone archway at the north entrance of the world’s first national park. The Park Service plans to commemorate the event. I wonder what Roosevelt would say if he could attend. I picture him pounding his fist and […]
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Snowmobiles are the people’s choice for Yellowstone
The Bush administration’s decision to upset the ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park has been met, as expected, with howls of outrage from both environmentalists and a lot of the media. After the millions of grant dollars spent lobbying and litigating to ban snowmobiles, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other environmental groups should be […]
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Real men head for Alaska
There is the West, and then there is Alaska, a region so wild and isolated as to make Wyoming appear tame as a strip mall. Flying to Kodiak Island (“America’s second largest island”) is risky on a good day. The day I chose to travel to the island on business was not a good day. […]
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Public servants may go the way of the dodo
President Bush wants to privatize 425,000 federal jobs, one-quarter of the nation’s positions that are product or service-oriented in nature. Workers who exercise discretion, set policies and budgets, or perform other duties that are “inherently governmental” are immune from the process, for the time being. Does this sound good for private enterprise? Sure, for some […]
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A Christmas tradition pueblo-style
At age 79, Vidal Aragon is moving strongly into his second century as perhaps the premier silver smith in the 12 pueblos of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. He signs his jewelry with the bear paw and “VA” merged together. His name commands top prices with the Santa Fe trade. He doesn’t have to […]
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Life on the border, where education gets lost
Before I started my job this year as librarian and English teacher on the Tohono O’odham reservation, I visited the campus. A teacher looked me over and said, “You better come in that library like a gangbuster.” A gangbuster? Having just turned 25, I must have looked as young as I felt. But I’d studied […]
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Medical use of marijuana is a states’ rights issue
Medical use of marijuana is a states’ rights issue By Seth Zuckerman Like the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, marijuana advocates suffered a setback at the polls last month. By a margin of 2 to 1, Nevada voters trounced a much-publicized proposal to legalize cannabis for personal use. B ut the Bush administration would be […]
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Running Green is a learning experience
“Green Party, huh? Well, I’ll vote for you, as long as you’re not a damn Democrat,” said my 70-year-old neighbor when I told him I was running for the Montana state Legislature. Few weeks later, I introduced myself to Tom, a local businessman and one of the Montana Freeman who’d gotten into trouble with the […]
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Like Butte, Montana, an old dog hangs on
(Note: a longer version of this essay is here.) On the dust-blown fringe of Butte, Mont., at the core of one of the nation’s largest Superfund sites, lives an amazing paradox. Its genus is Canus, but its species would have to be called extraordinarius. I doubt there’s another mutt like this on the planet. The […]
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Ranchers in the West should call it quits
In the summer of 2000, in the midst of one of the most intense droughts in the Southwest in decades, I was radicalized by fire. During an 11-day backpack across the Gila Wilderness, my companion and I came across one of the rarest events in the cow-burnt landscapes of the West — a gentle fire, […]
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The view from ground zero at Oregon’s biggest fire in 100 years
This Halloween I camped in the frozen ash near ground zero of the 499,968-acre Biscuit Fire, the nation’s largest wildfire of 2002, and the biggest in Oregon for a century. My wife was not wild about the idea. The Pacific Northwest’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, had just promoted a three-part feature on Biscuit, billing it […]
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Some lessons about coyotes stick in your mind
A friend from Nevada, an environmentalist, wrote me recently to say she’s been reading the minutes of the Nevada Wildlife Commission, which is using M-4s to kill coyotes in cases of “livestock predation.” The commission is now talking about whether to allow the cyanide guns in “cases of game predation,” otherwise known as doing what […]
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Why one Nevada town is the last, smartest boomtown
It takes an hour for a commuter propjet to cover the 230 miles of desolate salt flats and sagebrush between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Elko, Nev. By the time passengers glimpse the alpine meadows and snowfields of the Ruby Mountains just east of Elko, the aircraft is already making a bumpy descent toward an […]
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It’s good to be impassioned!
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with a cheery woman I love to be around. She’s an artist, still a diehard Ralph Naderite and a dedicated organic gardener. But one day, when I was ranting about some ongoing environmental disaster or another, she stood up in her broccoli patch, gave me a withering […]
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Eco-farmers seek to grow habitat as well as crops
Northern California farmer John Anderson is on the cutting edge of a new movement that seeks ways for farmers to incorporate stewardship practices into the daily pursuit of their livelihoods. Anderson and others believe it’s a key survival strategy for small farmers, plus a way to get beyond bitter struggles with environmentalists. Ultimately, it would […]
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Ranchers band together to break a monopoly on marketing
Step onto almost any ranch in the West nowadays and you’re likely to hear someone cussin’ the meatpackers. The next thing you might hear is a phone call from that same rancher to his or her congressman asking support for a ban on packer ownership of cattle. Packers are the people at the end of […]
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Mexican workers in our towns want to legitimize their presence
The hour was early, the high desert air was fall-frosty, and the coffee was, well, truly horrible. I’d arrived for my volunteer shift at a Catholic church in the western Colorado town of Delta, and I had a very bad feeling. Five hundred people were already waiting on the sidewalk outside, sipping the acrid coffee, […]
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My trysts with Miss November
November out West: The spectacle of changing leaves has passed, the hills collecting snow are not yet blanketed in white, and daylight savings brings night time all too soon. It may sound innocent, but the season feels like a cruel and careless mistress to me. I first ventured West in November, four years ago; I […]
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A message to environmentalists from a wildlife biologist
I should confess up-front that. although I’m an environmentalist and a wildlife biologist at a Western university, I admire ranchers. I should further confess that I live on a small piece of property near real ranches– ones big enough to be home to cattle and the shy kind of wildlife you don’t see on smaller […]