A BLM junkie explores little-known lands; a sea kayaker paddles the Inside Passage; and other tales of travel and adventure from around the West.
Strolling San Francisco with a special guidebook to street trees
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. San Francisco, California Let’s say you’ve freed up a couple days and more than a couple bucks to visit San Francisco. Unlike the hordes of tourists who visit this city each year, you’d rather not spend your entire…
Volunteering provides a special experience in national parks
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Big Bend National Park, Texas The Rio Grande is slow and muddy along the Mexican border, at the base of Santa Elena Canyon, on a sunny November day. My roommate, Alex Brachman –– like me, a fresh-out-of-college intern…
Secret getaways of the National Landscape Conservation System
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Updated 4/9/13 The only map I have shows the way out of Las Vegas — always a good thing to know. It is crisp and folded-up on the passenger seat and it says to take the eastbound interstate,…
A photographic journey through Montana’s vanished towns
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. We recommend that you use the Gallery View option to enjoy these photographs. When I arrived at the crossroads of Cartersville Road and Highway 446, I expected to photograph only a decrepit old schoolhouse; after all, I was…
Tribal casinos expand and go upscale
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. The Navajo Nation’s first casino opened in 2008 with a dramatic design — a simple, massive structure shaped like a tent. Prominently located between Interstate 40 and the red-rock cliffs just east of Gallup, N.M., it’s a shell…
Visitors to public lands seek different experiences than in the past
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. People who visit Oregon’s state parks have a surprising desire to stay in yurts, even booking them months in advance. Eighteen state parks offer 96 “standard yurts” described by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department as “really cool”…
A (futile) line in the oil sands
As a lifelong conservationist and the former head of the Izaak Walton League of America, I think environmental opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is wrong (“Taking it to the streets,” HCN, 2/18/13). Climate change is a vital issue that must be addressed, but drawing a line in the oil sands will not help. Canada’s…
Lost and Found Montana: Cartersville
Photographer Jeremy Lurgio unexpectedly finds that life carries on in Cartersville, a small Montana town whose name was struck from official state highway maps in 2000. Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West.
Westerners love erotic landscapes
Note: This essay is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. On this October morning in southern Idaho, the air is dry and frosty, and the shifting sand dunes reflected in the lake at Bruneau are soft and curvy –– feminine shapes. The woman I love becomes one with…
Beijing’s toxic brew, explained
The really big difference between air quality in Salt Lake City and Beijing — indeed, any city of size that lies north of the Yangtze River — stems from particulates and other emissions in the exhaust from many widely dispersed furnaces whose associated boilers feed into district heating systems, which are the primary means for…
Field notes from a solo paddle in Alaska’s Inside Passage
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Mid-day on the last Fourth of July, I sat in my kayak and watched a parade like nothing I’d ever seen: Icebergs shaped like elaborate floats bobbed past me, one resembling an eagle, another a house, still others…
HCN takes a break
Note: This Dear Friends is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. In mid-March, as the last of the scanty winter snow melts here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox,…
It’s time to get real
The San Luis Valley is a wonderful place that needs to be preserved (“Farming on the Fringe,” HCN, 2/18/13). The water issues will only get worse as the climate goes into this hotter drier spell — one that could last thousands of years. I’m glad the local people are working on a solution to their…
Kids in the backcountry: The earlier, the better
Note: This essay is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. The three of them race out in front of us — dots of colorful energy bushwhacking across the tundra, elevation over 10,000 feet, deep in the northern Wyoming’s Washakie Wilderness. Ruby, 11, Sawyer, 13, and Eli, 14. They…
Craig Childs on hidden, trail-free BLM gems
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talks with HCN contributing editor and Western adventurer Craig Childs. Thumbnail photo licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Flickr user Conservation Lands Foundation.
Travel, HCN-style
Note: This is an introduction to a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. My wife, Linda, and I try to avoid the expected when we travel. When our kids were young, for instance, we all vacationed for several days in Orlando, Fla., the site of Disney World. But we didn’t spend…
Trouble for more than one Arizona river
Thanks for spreading the news of growing threats to the San Pedro (“Standoff on the San Pedro,” HCN, 2/18/13). However, the San Pedro is not “the Southwest’s last free-flowing major desert river.” In fact, the Verde River is the longest surviving living river in Arizona. A much larger river, it supports a healthy riparian habitat…