The Snake River is used as a sewer system for Big Ag in Idaho, temperature predictions for Western cities in 2100, women in the legislature and potential protection for wolverines in an era of climate change.
What the West will feel like in 2100
Scenarios for how our cities will change with the climate.
The roads scholar
An ecologist helps wildlife safely cross highways.
Idaho’s sewer system is the Snake River
As Big Ag flourishes, this massive waterway suffers.
Women in Western legislatures
Which states are lagging and which lead the way?
Fracking without fresh water
A Texas oil company looks for other ways to supply its water needs.
Old friends
I’m 35 and also cannot find backpacking companions my age (HCN, 7/21/14). Most friends my age are more interested in camping at the brewery or a music festival. All my backpacking buddies are pushing 60. Still, I can’t help but enjoy the thought that traffic on the trails is getting better and not worse. Bradley…
Polite excuses
After reading Quinn Read’s article “The Virtues of Old-School Car Camping” (HCN, 7/21/14), I was struck with a wonderful moment of reminiscing. It took me back to the days of family car camping in the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona and the Rockies in Colorado. We, like Quinn, would struggle to fall asleep before Dad’s snoring…
Shocked at suckers
Thanks to Ted Williams and HCN for the article “Suckers for Gold” (6/9/14). First, I was surprised that such an “enterprise” exists. Then, I was outraged at the ways these “miners” disturb riverbeds and fragile habitat for fish and other creatures. Finally, I was shocked to learn that my own state of Washington has not…
Short-sighted snowmen
Do recreational snowmobilers care enough about the future of their sport to lobby for global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (“Snowmobiling for science,” HCN, 6/9/14)? Snowmelt is occurring earlier every year, and that is directly attributable to global warming. While snowmobilers are worrying about “large closures,” they ought to worry even more about shorter and…
Summer swimming in a Washington lake
When I was a kid, I swam all summer in backyard pools and at the city park, lessons in the morning, wildness all afternoon. My bare feet grew calluses, my hair turned brittle green, my shoulders got broad, my Lycra suits disintegrated. And then I left home. I’ve lived in this mountain town for a…
A once nomadic firefighter decides to stay put
There’s a wildfire burning three miles from my house. Sparked by lightning, the column of smoke went nuclear yesterday, pushing flame through deadfall on the rugged shoulder of Chief Joseph Mountain in northwestern Oregon. This is a mountain we climb and ski and hike, the place where, with a glance, we can see the elevation…
Taking the romance out of farming
(This editor’s note accompanies an HCN magazine cover story headlined: Idaho’s sewer system is the Snake River.) When I was a boy in the Midwest in the 1950s, I liked to walk through the corn fields in late summer. I could disappear deep in the thickets of green stalks that were taller than I was,…
California water waster fines and condoms from conservationists.
COLORADOYou could almost hear the teeth gnashing in Aspen. A well-connected man, Robert K. Steel, chairman of the board of the Aspen Institute, exploited a loophole in county regulations so that his daughter could be married in remote splendor – in a “pristine sub-alpine meadow on the backside of Aspen Mountain at 10,000 in elevation,”…
The Ansel Adams Wilderness
The Ansel Adams WildernessPeter Essick, foreward by Jamie Williams112 pages, hardcover:$22.95.National Geographic Society, 2014. For 25 years, Peter Essick traveled the globe as a National Geographic photographer, and recently he was named one of the world’s 40 most influential nature photographers. In 2010, Essick began “a potentially controversial” project in his native California: shooting in…
Climate changes for wolverine listing
What good can the Endangered Species Act do in a warming world?
The bomb builders’ wives
The Wives of Los AlamosTaraShea Nesbit233 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury, 2014. In her deft debut novel, Colorado writer TaraShea Nesbit imagines the lives of the wives of the men who were stationed in New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, working on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Nesbit writes in the collective voice of the…
Early eulogies
Methinks Christopher Ketcham is a bit premature with his eulogy, “The death of backpacking?” (HCN, 7/21/14). Backpacking is not so much a sport as an activity whose ebb and flow in popularity reflects that of the natural world he enters on his sojourns. Nothing in that world stays the same. It gets hot, it gets…
Future defenders
Maybe instead it’s the death of parenting (HCN, 7/21/14). Take your children backpacking. Start ’em early and start small. It can be done. Get creative. Make it happen. Leave the devices at home. It does not need to be expensive. No doubt it’s cheaper than 129 other things Americans do on vacation. Lord knows wildlands…
The Tea Party loses one in Colorado
John Pennington lost his primary election bid for sheriff of Mesa County, here in western Colorado, last month. I don’t know why he lost to Steve King, a former Republican state legislator who then canceled his own campaign due to a scandal, leaving the general election race wide-open for several new candidates. But I do…
Lay of the land
How to Read the American West: A Field GuideWilliam Wyckoff384 pages, paperback: $44.95.University of Washington Press, 2014. Too hefty to be carried in a hip pocket or even a daypack, William Wyckoff’s How To Read The American West is a field guide unlike any other, with a focus on patterns, variations and the distribution of…
Meeting needs
I respect John Olivas’ choice to ban fracking from his area (“Ready for a fight,” HCN, 6/23/14). But on the other side of the coin, in areas like Wyoming that derive a lot of money from fossil fuel activities, the environmentalist should respect our choice to prefer jobs. The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest emission rules…
New kids in town
Well, they’re not exactly kids, but HCN is pleased to welcome two new interns to our Paonia, Colorado, office for six months of journalism boot camp. And we’re also delighted that Krista Langlois, our extraordinary editorial fellow, is staying for another six months. Growing up in Toronto, new editorial intern Sarah Tory devoured books on…
The Latest: 20,000 Utah acres protected from drilling
BackstoryFor years, Utah conservationists struggled to protect sensitive environments from four-wheeling, oil and gas and other development – until conservative lawmakers like Republican Rep. Rob Bishop realized that state-held lands with wilderness characteristics could be used to bargain for mineral-rich, federally owned tracts. In 2013, Bishop began negotiating a compromise with wilderness advocates, off-roaders and…