I’m taking a hunter education class in Lander, Wyo., and at the first get-together, I share a table with Ridge, 9, and Dante, 10, cousins who’ve already hunted lots of deer and antelope with their dads and grandpa. They can’t get hunting licenses of their own until they turn 12, but they’re eager to learn […]
Communities
Posted inRange
Eating ethically: a tree-hugging former vegetarian learns to hunt
Cross-posted from The Last Word on Nothing. I don’t like guns. I’m almost universally opposed to killing things. So why then, did I spend a recent weekend learning how to handle a shotgun and rifle? What possessed me to take the hunter safety exam necessary for obtaining a hunting license? It began with a dead elk. […]
Posted inWotr
Nature fierce and not so pretty
I’ve never cared much for nature writing as a genre because usually there’s too much wafting, glimmering and shimmering. Things seem to happen outdoors that seldom happen in real life. Animals, for instance, often come off seeming more noble, contemplative and spiritual than humans. I think nature can be just as drunk, self-indulgent and spiteful […]
Posted inWotr
Beware of wolves cloaked in “access”
America’s national forests belong to everyone, and all Americans deserve and rightfully demand access to this national birthright. Such access is like oxygen for hunters and anglers, but beware: Industry barracudas and their pals in Congress are trying to hoodwink sportsmen into supporting bad legislation by promising more lenient access. Today’s case in point is […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
The turn of the wheel: the many lives of writer H. Lee Barnes
“A lot of the themes that I work with are within the context of the lives I have lived,” says Nevada author H. Lee Barnes. “My characters are grassroots people who struggle to make it to the next day.” An Army brat who grew up “all over the Southwest,” Barnes was a Green Beret in […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Where’s the good news?
While I was interested in the article, “Looking for Balance in Navajoland,” and am well aware that controversy and upset sell better than routine good performance, I wonder if you could manage at least a couple of stories on some of the success stories in Indian Country (HCN, 8/22/11). There must be many, but one […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Big growth, big problems
In your snapshot, “Down and out in the West,” you observed that Nevada leads the county in unemployment “for the 14th straight month, due to its almost complete reliance on the still-pretty-dilapidated housing, gaming and tourism industries” (HCN, 8/22/2011). Similarly, you wrote, “California is still reeling from the housing implosion,” but Wyoming and North Dakota […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Mary Clearman Blew reads from her book, This is Not the Ivy League
The author reads part of the prologue to This is Not the Ivy League.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Fall books for the sweetly socked-in
The changes seem to happen overnight: Even under the stifling lid of late-summer days, September’s dusk begins to come on cool, its mornings curling at the edges with damp chill like the pages of a book. Along the ditches and river, the cottonwood leaves are first to drop, scattering the ground with gold. Tea becomes […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Living close to the bone in modern Alaska: A review of Bear Down, Bear North
Bear Down, Bear North Melinda Moustakis144 pages, softcover: $24.95.University of Georgia Press, September. Bear Down, Bear North plunges its reader deep into tangled relations and beautiful places. This small craft of 13 linked stories holds everything necessary to survive the frigid Alaskan waters. Washington writer Melinda Moustakis works words attentively and playfully, slipping like a […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
No bones about it: two books on the disappearing Everett Ruess
Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness ExplorerDavid Roberts416 pages, hardcover: $25.Broadway, 2011. Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing AfterlifePhilip L. Fradkin296 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California Press, 2011. There’s nothing like an unsolved disappearance to create an enduring cult hero. Maybe that’s why Amelia Earhart and […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Skipped issue, HCN: the German edition, visitors and a remembrance
After a busy summer, the HCN staff is taking a two-week breather, one of four publishing breaks we take each year. Look for your next issue around Oct. 17. How do you say cougar in German? HCN associate editor Sarah Gilman‘s Writers on the Range essay, “Ordinary Wild,” about a cougar that wandered into downtown […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Stories like a bale unrolling: a review of Conjugations of the Verb To Be
Conjugations of the Verb To BeGlen Chamberlain193 pages, softcover: $11.95.Delphinium Press, September. The fictional ranching town of Buckle in eastern Montana is the setting for Bozeman writer Glen Chamberlain’s short-story collection Conjugations of the Verb To Be. The stories, though independent, are skillfully intertwined; the lives of the characters overlap and intermingle in the many […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Tales of sagebrush and murder: A review of Assumption
AssumptionPercival Everett272 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, October. There aren’t nearly enough books set in New Mexico. With its cinematic lighting and uniquely off-kilter characters, the state should grow great novels as plentifully as chiles. Strangely, though, it hasn’t. California author Percival Everett sets out to change that with Assumption, a trilogy of mysteries starring Ogden […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
‘The most sacred form of welfare’
Nevada has two large bodies of natural water within its borders: Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake (HCN, 8/8/11). The state of Nevada has made the choice to sacrifice Walker Lake by over-allocating the upstream water rights to a few upstream communities. As your article stated, irrigation brought glorious benefits, from onions to potatoes, alfalfa and […]
Posted inWotr
Survival of the worthless
I recently flew from my home in southern Oregon to Denver, giving me the opportunity to reflect on the fate of Western landscapes. As we took off from the Medford airport, it was easy to see how the neat pear orchards and vineyards of my compact valley are increasingly hemmed in by subdivisions. But we […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
How I survive scorching Phoenix summers
Every summer in Phoenix, I picture people in the rest of the country riding bikes through fields of purple flowers, picnicking in parks and strolling down leafy streets. I picture them summering, while I am simmering, trying not to melt. When I step out of my house, I’m hit with a wall of scorching gas, […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: On the construction of a hillbilly cyborg
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. I’ve never liked cows one bit. I know they come off looking pretty good in Hollywood glamorizations of life on the trail, and they’re supposed to be cute when they appear in the form […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Mules matter
WYOMING Some people say that the most thrilling thing about any Western Independence Day parade comes toward the end, when the old-time stagecoaches and horse-and-buggy outfits take over. But there’s always the possibility that the animals will get spooked, run amok and end up stomping on people. That almost happened in Cody, Wyo., July 3, […]
Posted inWotr
Big Sky swipe
Montana has been lauded this year for its tourism campaign, which consists largely of plastering photos, buffalo-sized and beautiful, on things that are decidedly not beautiful: buses in New York City, trains in Chicago. This spring, the American Marketing Association awarded the Bozeman, Mont., company that developed the campaign an “Effie” – “Effie” being short […]