A small Nevada town struggles with a legacy of cancer, a Californian works to protect ancient petroglyphs in the face of solar development, the newly unendangered minnow, and more.
Birthday of the burning boot
Making peace with growing older, on a hike near Patagonia, Arizona.
Fallon, Nevada’s deadly legacy
In a small town once plagued by childhood cancer, some families still search for answers.
The geoglyph guardian
Alfredo Figueroa fights to protect ancient land art in southern California.
The Latest: New EPA rules for diesel in fracking
BackstoryHydraulic fracturing – the injection of water, sand and chemicals into the ground to extract oil and natural gas – has sparked fears of groundwater contamination in rural communities like Pavillion, Wyo. (“Hydrofracked: One man’s quest for answers about natural gas drilling,” HCN, 6/27/11). Diesel is one of the more controversial ingredients used in some…
The legend behind Salvation Mountain
At the entrance to the self-proclaimed “last free place on earth” – Slab City, a squatter camp in California’s Imperial Valley – stands Salvation Mountain, its slopes painted with biblical quotations and its peak topped with a giant white cross. The candy-colored hill is just a few stories high, but to the drifters, dreamers and…
The little fish that could
An endangered Oregon minnow recovers, while many native fish still struggle.
Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art: 1775-2012
Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art, 1775-2012Barbara C. Matilsky, 144 pages, paperback: $39.95. Whatcom Museum, 2013 When intrepid artists first ventured to the poles two centuries ago, they returned with paintings and sketches that made the region’s otherworldly starkness seem elegant and timeless. More recently, artists portray a landscape that is running out…
A 100-pound pet tortoise wanders away, and cats are still killing birds.
Mishaps and mayhem from around the West.
Brutal frontier
The SonPhilipp Meyer592 pages, softcover: $16.99.Ecco, 2014. “The land was hard on its sons, harder yet on the sons of other lands,” writes Philipp Meyer in The Son, a masterful, gripping portrait of America’s Western expansion told through the lives of one Texas family. The Son braids together the stories of three members of the…
Cows are not a ‘tool’
When I read “The Odd Couple,” I saw my career flash before my eyes (HCN, 2/17/14). From 1984 to 2006, I was the hydrologist on the Beaverhead National Forest, and for most of that time, my fellow “ologists” and I were involved with the grazing issue. Occasionally, we would get the right combination of permittee,…
Goodbye, Hello
In January, our board of directors gathered by phone and Web to talk with staff about High Country News’ progress over the last four months. There’s good news: Print and digital subscriptions are up 1,000 from last year, our coffers are bursting with end-of-year donations (thanks to all who contributed!), and our redesigned website should…
Hope and history
In The Light Of JusticeWalter Echo-Hawk325 pages, softcover: $19.95.Fulcrum Publishing, 2013. It’s unthinkable that kids in America would ever be allowed to play “slaves and masters,” writes Walter Echo-Hawk, but we don’t see anything wrong with Junior strapping on the trusty ol’ cap-shooters for a game of “cowboys and Indians.” Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee tribal member…
Looking after we leap
In early January, the Elk River near Charleston, W.V., began to smell of licorice. The source of the strange odor was a steel tank with a small hole that leaked thousands of gallons of crude 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a chemical used in coal processing, into the river, just upstream of an intake for Charleston’s municipal water…
My time on the tank farms
In the early ’70s, I landed a job with ARCO, a contractor at the time overseeing tank farms (“The Hanford Whistleblowers,” HCN, 2/3/14). Working at the nukes was the best paying job around and it was what our dads did. Growing up in Richland, we walked our dads to the bus stop, and watched them…
Not the Hanford I knew
I worked at Hanford for a few years in the late ’50s and early ’60s (“The Hanford Whistleblowers,” HCN, 2/3/14). Some days, as we traveled to the reactor areas, you could see Nike missiles on the ridge across the Columbia River. The missiles were there to protect the site from air attack. We would have…
Silver (state) bullet
A proposed Mexico-to-Canada highway gets mixed reactions.