THE NATION “Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” reads one of the labels on a condom distributed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the feisty and litigious conservation nonprofit that has offices throughout the West. While other environmental groups dodge the sticky issue of over-population, the center — run by Kierán Suckling — […]
Communities
Posted inGoat
Making memories, one stock tank at a time
This year, I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving back home with my parents in central Montana. Holidays at home are plenty stuffed with the traditional trappings: board games, gravy boats, hungry pups making cute under the table, food-induced snooze fests in the living room. But what I most look forward to when I’m home […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
And now, a message from our sponsors …
In this issue, along with our regular ad pages, you will find the holiday Green Gift Guide. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of our generous advertising sponsors for their support. It takes readers like you and sponsors like them to make HCN‘s work possible. Please help us thank them by supporting […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Dealt a bad hand: A review of Doc
Doc Mary Doria Russell 394 pages, hardcover: $26. Random House, 2011. Versatile novelist Mary Doria Rusell’s captivating reimagining of the life of Doc Holliday ends before the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, that eternal wellspring for Western novels and movies. In her new book, Doc, Russell sees Holliday as more than a gambler and […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
The burial of Elouise Cobell
Elouise Cobell filed her class action suit in 1996 and originally thought it would take only three years to resolve the issues. She joined Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Attorney General Eric Holder in making the settlement announcement. Tami A. Heilemann-DOI On Oct. 22, Elouise Cobell was buried on the Blacktail Ranch where she and […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
An unexpected L.A. story: A review of The Barbarian Nurseries
The Barbarian Nurseries: A NovelHéctor Tobar422 pages, hardcover: $27.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Los Angeles Times columnist Héctor Tobar’s ferocious new novel, The Barbarian Nurseries, deftly and convincingly plunges us into the heated national debate on undocumented immigration. Araceli Ramirez, a single woman from Mexico City, works as the live-in housekeeper for Maureen Thompson and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bringing it home, keeping it wild
IDAHOYou might call it a minor movement, but “reshoring” — a new word that means bringing offshore jobs back home — is buoying some residents of rural Idaho. About 12 years ago, Buck Knives sent up to half its production to China, thinking it would save money. Unfortunately, many customers were steamed by that decision. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Of things falling
WYOMING Marvin Bass, a Florida man who hadn’t taken a vacation in five years, didn’t get to enjoy his visit to Yellowstone National Park as planned. He was driving a borrowed 42-foot motor home up 8,431-foot-high Teton Pass when he realized how much it was laboring on the 10 percent grade. So Bass parked the […]
Posted inWotr
Of marigolds and a day with the dead
Living close to the Mexican border, I’m often asked if I have problems with drug smugglers or “illegals” trekking across our land here in the mountains of southern Arizona. When I tell friends in the Midwest or New York or Oregon that my main worry is walking into a Safeway parking lot in Tucson and […]
Posted inArticles
The times, they are a changin’
Dear Friend: Evolution happens. For the first 25 years of its existence, High Country News delivered its unique blend of in-depth reporting, essays and humor via a black-and-white tabloid printed on newspaper stock. Sometimes the ink got smeared and stained your fingers. In 1995, the “paper” was joined by a website, hcn.org, that served primarily […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Energy succeeds where housing developers can’t
If you’re looking for a parable of the post-housing-bust West — where the real estate economy appears to have crumbled while the extraction industry roars back with a vengeance — you might find one in the troubled Banning-Lewis Ranch on Colorado’s sprawling Front Range. The city of Colorado Springs annexed the more than 21,000-acre property, […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Meditations on craft: A review of What I Learned at Bug Camp
What I Learned at Bug Camp: Essays on Finding a Home in the WorldBy Sarah Juniper Rabkin173 pages, softcover: $15.Juniper Lake Press, 2011. Twenty-some years ago, University of California, Santa Cruz, writing professor Sarah Juniper Rabkin banished us from the classroom and told us to write outside, under a redwood. The assignment left a lasting […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Reluctant assassins: A review of The Sisters Brothers
The Sisters BrothersPatrick DeWitt325 pages, hardcover: $24.99.HarperCollins, 2011. Although it’s set during the Gold Rush era, Oregon author Patrick DeWitt’s second novel, The Sisters Brothers, is modern Western noir at its finest. The notorious brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters work as professional hit men. Eli, the narrator, is the good-natured “fat one.” Charlie, a merciless […]
Posted inRange
Where soldiers come from
By Bill Bishop, the Daily Yonder Where Soldiers Come From – New HD Trailer from Heather Courtney on Vimeo. Heather Courtney recalls that she was “frustrated,” troubled by “how small town America was often portrayed in the mainstream media.” She said she wanted to make a movie that would “tell a story about my rural […]
Posted inWotr
Wolf on a picnic table
I once saw a wolf, or what I was told was one. It stood on a picnic table in Montana in the late evening sunshine, and 30 or so onlookers gathered around. The wolf was named Kaori. Clipped to a leash attached to her handler’s harness, she was part of an educational program and accustomed […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
A fall crop of visitors
Along with harvesting pears and apples here in HCN‘s hometown of Paonia, Colo., we’ve reaped a bountiful bunch of fall visitors. Subscriber Lynn Lipscomb stopped by our offices to say hello in mid-September. Recently retired, she’s enjoying autumn in the desert at her home in Hurricane, Utah, near Zion National Park. But come winter, she’ll […]
Posted inGoat
What would John McPhee do?
Cross posted from The Last Word on Nothing When I’m thrashing through the brambles of a first draft, no story in sight, I have one reliable lifeline. WWJMD? What would John McPhee do to get himself out of this #%&! mess? This, after all, is the guy who found fascinating stories in Alaskan placer mining. And the […]
Posted inWotr
When the bear comes too close to home
It’s always seemed like a good idea to have chickens, especially if you live in a rural area. They turn compost into eggs. In the fall, they fill the freezer full of healthy meat at a reasonable price. They provide feathers for my dad’s fly-tying and my daughter’s hair. They eat the grasshoppers and fertilize […]
Posted inWotr
Pulling an Everett Ruess
After six months without a job, I wonder how I will support myself. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, mummified inside a contorted blanket, my dog hunched over my right hip in the posture of a turkey vulture. In the dark it’s hard to tell if he’s watching over me or […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Guns, wolves, and graves
ARIZONA Raffle prizes run the gamut, but in Tucson recently, one particular offering seemed oddly off-kilter, to say the least. To raise money for the Pima County Republicans, party members aimed to sell 125 raffle tickets for $10 each, with the lucky winner receiving a Glock pistol — “the same brand of gun used in […]