This year marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark book, Silent Spring. Twenty-seven years after her death, Carson – who would have been 100 this year – continues to influence Americans’ daily lives. Her legacy is reflected all the way from the Environmental Protection Agency’s restrictions on pesticide use down to […]
Books
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Twenty views of the West
Best Stories of the American West is a collection of Western stories in which gunfights are outnumbered by basketballs, and the cowboy hats end up mangled beyond recognition. In other words, it’s not about the West as exemplified by John Wayne; it’s about a place in which people actually live. In compiling this first volume, […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
A forest in flux
Perched 25 stories high in a construction crane – above the crowns of the Douglas firs – environmental writer Jon Luoma surveyed the forest canopy, searching for a humble lichen, Lobaria oregana. The lichen forges an intimate relationship with the trees, swapping nutrients for a home and helping the firs grow taller. These sorts of […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
On the road, and on a date with history
The road trip is a classic American narrative of escape: Huck Finn lighting out for the territory, Jack Kerouac chasing his dreams down the blacktop. In Uncertain Pilgrims, Lenore Carroll gives us a different kind of journey, narrated by Carla Brancato, a young woman from Kansas City who is struggling to get over the death […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
Home is where the compost is
Robert Michael Pyle has synthesized three decades of life in a small community in southwest Washington into this exquisite portrait of place. Each chapter of Sky Time in Gray’s River represents a month of the year in Gray’s River Valley; each brims with vivid moments and vignettes. Pyle, a renowned butterfly expert, has 14 books […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2007: Hydrogen Highway Revisited
A taste of ecological medicine
In Nature’s Restoration, writer and naturalist Peter Friederici transports the reader to six ecologically damaged landscapes, from Bermuda to Arizona, that people are struggling to restore. Some of the challenges derive from the painstaking work inherent in restoration: plant by plant, species by species, two steps forward, one step back. Friederici also examines the conundrums […]
Posted inJune 25, 2007: Predator hunters for the environment
Big dams, big deal
With a title like Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics, it’s no surprise that this tome is deep on history and long on details. That said, the book is also remarkably hard to put down. It’s well worth the read for those who have ever wondered how structures […]
Posted inJune 25, 2007: Predator hunters for the environment
The great American road trip
Long road trips are a guilty pleasure in the era of climate change. It’s one thing to recycle, buy organic, and switch light bulbs, but to give up the car altogether? Travel feels essential to an American’s experience of the world, and for most of us, travel means driving. Author W. Scott Olsen — who […]
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Impressions of Pueblo prehistory
Every branch of science needs its voice — the popular writer who makes research come alive, in ways that scientists rarely manage. With House of Rain, Craig Childs lays claim to be the voice of Southwestern archaeology. Moving across the region, he conjures up sites, scientists, and the prehistoric people of the Colorado Plateau. Those […]
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Western open space: Land of intrinsic worth
In some parts of the West, conversations about land use can be hazardous to your health. This time, you can leave the brass knuckles at home; all you need is a bookmark. The writers in Home Land aren’t just old-time Westerners; they include a descendant of New York coal miners, a wildlife biologist, and a […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
A poet’s novel of the San Luis Valley
Entering Colorado poet Aaron Abeyta’s first novel, Rise, Do Not Be Afraid, is like visiting a world that no longer exists — if it ever did. Santa Rita, the mythical Western town that forms the subject of this short, dense novel, is a place reminiscent of Eden, both before and after the Fall. One is […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Longing for a buried past
If you have heard of the Yaak Valley in northwest Montana, and if you know of the threats to its particular wildness, it’s probably because you’ve read a plea for its protection by Rick Bass. Bass’ fierce love for the Yaak has not always been good for his fiction. “It bleeds just like blood throughout […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Tipping the scales towards native species
When biologist Phil Pister used buckets to rescue the last Owens pupfish from an evaporating pool, he knew that if he “tripped over a piece of barbed wire,” the species was history. Thirty-eight years later, the pupfish survives only because scientists move the fish pool-to-pool and constantly trap predators. In Unnatural Landscapes, Ceiridwen Terrill, a […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
British writer tackles border politics
Make room on your bookshelf: Midnight Cactus will fit nicely between T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain and Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway. While Boyle provides a satiric fictional account of Southern California haves versus immigrant have-nots, and Urrea documents a deadly real-life journey across the border, British author Bella Pollen offers a lighter, though […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
A brief, interpretive look at the Indian Wars
Author Michael Blake is best known for his fictional accounts of the often-violent cultural misunderstandings between Euro-Americans and Native Americans; his novel Dances with Wolves was made into a film and won several Academy Awards. But in his latest book, Indian Yell, Blake shifts his focus from historical fiction to historical fact. Chronicling 12 of […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
The granddaddy of all collaboration groups
One thing you quickly learn in the rural West is that ranchers come in all shapes and sizes. There are the fourth-generation ranchers hanging on by their toenails with overextended credit and the eternal hope that cattle prices will rebound, the drought will break, and most of their cows will be found on the mountain […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
You ain’t from around here, are you?
Jim Stiles, the itinerant publisher of Moab’s venerable Canyon Country Zephyr, knows that the rural West is in danger. He also knows who’s to blame: city folk. That’s the gist, anyway, of Brave New West: Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed. Stiles is obviously a man of character and passion. You want to agree […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
The hidden costs of our coal habit
Sometimes ignorance feels like bliss. When you’re stowing your breakfast eggs and sausage, you don’t want to think too much about their origins. But ignorance is also dangerous. Take, for example, the electricity that powers the stove and coffeepot behind your morning breakfast. Today, more than half of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal. This […]
Posted inApril 2, 2007: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields
Thomas McGuane’s lonely freaks
One of our most distinctive short story writers, Flannery O’Connor, famously opined, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” Her subject was the metaphysical and geographical American South, its spirit inextricable from its landscape and history. […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2007: The Silence of the Bees
Mortal fear and a state of wild grace
“Grace” is not the first word that comes to mind when you picture two naked women running hell-bent through the desert night, fleeing from UFOs. “Fear” seems more apt — the primal kind that stems from being chased in the dark by a faceless predator while having numerous opportunities to impale tender flesh on ocotillo […]