It is not enough to be outraged at industry’s abuse of our soil, water and air, writes Mike McCloskey in his autobiography, In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club. We have to harness our rage and wage savvy campaigns in the courtroom and Congress. McCloskey joined the Sierra Club in 1960 […]
Books
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Brave ‘yellowbellies’ served the West well
During World War II, more than 250 American men — mostly Quakers and Mennonites — stood up for their pacifist beliefs, declared themselves conscientious objectors, and volunteered for a different risky service. They became pioneer smokejumpers, parachuting onto the front lines of wildfires in the Rockies. Smokejumping had only been invented in 1939, and it […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Dry-hiking in a desert awash with history
At 61, mountaineer and academic David Roberts can’t resist the chance to rack up another first. Comb Ridge is a jutting sandstone escarpment that runs from Kayenta, Ariz., to Blanding, Utah. One hundred miles long from end to end, the ridge was one of the few remaining hikes that no one had completed. But Roberts […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
A deliberate life in the Rockies
If you’re feeling assailed by civilization — its cell phones, computers and telemarketers — David Petersen has an antidote for you. But be forewarned: It’s strong medicine. It’s taken Petersen more than two decades to acquire his hard-earned lessons, and the going hasn’t always been smooth. In 1981, he and his wife, Caroline, left behind […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
A tribal renaissance
If, when you think of Indian country, you think first of its particular heartaches — alcoholism, violence, poverty, and hopelessness — then read Blood Struggle, Charles Wilkinson’s inspiring account of Indians’ political and legal victories during the last fifty years. A catalog of Indian achievements rather than problems is rare, welcome, and a little unexpected, […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
What’s wrong with the EPA?
If you’re wondering why this nation’s environmental laws aren’t implemented coherently or consistently, grab David Schoenbrod’s latest, Saving Our Environment from Washington. From a Natural Resources Defense attorney turned Yale law professor, the book is part memoir, part manifesto. And considering the potentially boring topic, Schoenbrod does an excellent job of explaining how laws such […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Big yellow taxi — in Duke City
At once meditative and profane, Robert Leonard’s Yellow Cab traces his after-dark odysseys as a University of New Mexico anthropology professor who moonlights behind the wheel of a taxi. Leonard makes us privy to the stream of confessions from the back seat, narrating them in a breezy, urban voice, with the world-weary persona of someone […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Hits and missives from Cactus Ed
Writers today: When they’re not updating their blogs or prepping for that tell-all Oprah interview, they’re indecently exposé-ing themselves in another provocative, tragicomic memoir. But there was a time when insight into the person-behind-the-pages was hard to come by, when peering into an author’s inner narrative meant waiting until some enterprising scholar published the author’s […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Endangered Species 101 — in poetry
Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson, father of sociobiology and a relentless biodiversity advocate, once estimated that human gluttony helps exterminate species at the rate of one every 20 minutes. The Dire Elegies laments the plight of North America’s endangered wildlife in poetic detail — but this is more than a disgruntled ode to dying species […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Destroyer of worlds
A group of scientists, a secret city and a weapon of unimaginable power: The story of the creation of the atomic bomb is straight out of a spy novel, but its impacts are all too real. After the weapon was tested at the Trinity site in New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “I […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
A life of brutal grace
Montana writer Swain Wolfe’s memoir, The Boy Who Invented Skiing, might be more aptly titled The Writer on His Way to Being An Alchemical Cartographer. Wolfe’s writing maps transformations, in a style both gritty and magical. Wolfe was born in the hardscrabble West of the late 1930s. His boyhood was spent in the Colorado Springs […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
For the love of a river
“Welcome to a way of life”: With these words, Christa Sadler invites readers to sit down by her literary campfire on the banks of the Colorado River. There’s This River is a gathering of rambunctious tattletales: often-hilarious accounts of river guides’ (mis)adventures herding tourists through the Grand Canyon. The anthology includes a glossary of river […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Loss and renewal in the Northwest
“These stories of loss are about farming and forestry in the Pacific Northwest,” writes Steven Radosevich in this compact collection of essays. “They come along with me out of my vineyard.” Radosevich, hunter, fisherman, grape grower and professor of forest science at Oregon State University, writes simple, painful prose about the diminishing natural wealth of […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Bearable ways to deal with bruins
Generally speaking, the last thing anybody wants is a book waving a “practical” banner. But practical can also be informative and funny, especially when it comes to bears. Linda Masterson, an award-winning writer and volunteer for the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Bear Aware team, has succeeded in converting what could have been a boring how-to […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
The merry — and meditative — farmer
In Blithe Tomato, California farmer Mike Madison writes about whatever strikes his fancy: neighborhood dogs, old tractors, and what it’s like to tangle with the local gophers for control of his tulips and olive trees. (He admits to losing 25 percent of his net income to the pests.) Madison’s collection of short essays makes it […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
A world built on groundwater
The entire West is headed for a much drier future. Ogallala Blue provides a good sense of the bleak realities of a life of scarcity. Author William Ashworth focuses on the Great Plains states, which have for decades thwarted a notorious lack of rain by reaching into the massive Ogallala Aquifer. Today, those states grow […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Dust in the wind
On Sept. 14, 1930, a strange dirt cloud swirled out of Kansas into the Texas Panhandle. Weathermen dismissed it as an oddity, but it marked the beginning of the worst long-term environmental disaster the United States has ever known — the Dust Bowl. That bleak period is chronicled in The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan’s […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Climate-change clues — in tropical glaciers
To understand why nearly every climate expert on the planet believes our hundred-year binge on fossil fuels has set the stage for today’s wrenching weather disruptions, you have to take the long view, looking beyond a single hurricane or heat wave. If you do that, the news gets worse. And if you really wish to […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Nuestra America
In recent months, millions of Latinos have taken to the streets over immigration — more than 50,000 in Denver alone. Hector Tobar’s Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States is a thoughtful and wide-ranging examination of the people who have come from the Americas to a country that calls itself […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
A season of love — and secrets
When an unexpected teaching vacancy arises in the town’s one-room schoolhouse, Morrie steps in. His pedagogy is unorthodox and his résumé dubious, but he ignites the minds of his pupils. Morrie’s finest teaching moment comes when he organizes the children to honor the arrival of Halley’s Comet with a harmonica concert for their astonished parents. […]