Thank you for digging a little deeper than breaking environmental news, and adding some social aspect that ties it all together. HCN has gotten better with age. Please do not be so negative. I would appreciate balanced articles with happy endings. If all news is sad, I’ll stop reading it. Keep up the bad news! […]
Communities
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
HCN stories win awards
Our May 17, 2010, feature “Accidental Wilderness” by David Wolman just received recognition in the Society of Environmental Journalists 2010-2011 Awards for Reporting on the Environment. The story took third place in the category “Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market.” And in the 2011 Excellence in Journalism Awards from the Native American […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
A day among junk connoisseurs
San Juan County, N.M., is dry and scrubby, dotted with pump jacks, two coal-fired power plants and an oil refinery. Energy may be the area’s mainstay, but underlying this economy, is another informal one based on the selling and trading of old car parts. The county is a haven for junk cars – and for […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
Reality fiction: a review of What You See in the Dark
What You See in the Dark: A NovelManuel Muñoz272 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. It’s 1959, and the shiny façade of America’s white culture is beginning to tarnish. Schools are being desegregated and black people are starting to march in the streets of the South. There’s an “unsavory mixing of whites and Mexicans” in California […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
The aftermath of violence: A review of The Color of Night
The Color of Night Madison Smartt Bell 208 pages, softcover: $15.Vintage Contemporaries, 2011. Dangerous, charismatic leaders with zealous followers haunt Western history, with Jim Jones, the California cult leader responsible for the 1978 Guyana suicides, at the top of the list. In The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell’s 13th novel, the leader is clearly […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
The casual violence of driving
Slow is not always beautiful, but it’s the best way to experience the West — for better or worse. When I’m cross-country bicycling, I’m out in the air where I can smell everything, including the road surface, petroleum exhaust and carrion, especially deer that have died after being hit by vehicles. Of course, roads are […]
Posted inWotr
Just a few moments in Yellowstone
Early this summer, I went into the forest near Slough Creek Campground in Yellowstone National Park. Just out of sight of the last campsite, it felt very secluded. I set my folding chair on some flat ground next to a couple of dried buffalo flops and sat there, alone, for an hour or more. Nothing […]
Posted inWotr
Billboard battles don’t help much
About a year ago, in northeast Oregon, someone shot one of the wolves that ran with the Wenaha Pack. A few months later, the poacher had not yet been caught, and the case was getting cold. To revive interest, conservation groups raised $10,000 for a reward and rented space on a billboard just outside of […]
Posted inRange
Why rural education is failing
By Zach Wilson, The Daily Yonder The greatest challenge in rural education is the utter disregard for place. State and national governments pursue economic growth at the cost of communities, and such disregard is reflected in the way the state approaches public schooling. One of the most ugly and expedient trends in education is the […]
Posted inWotr
The light is changing… summer is ending
Suddenly it’s the end of August, and everything is different: The light has started to tilt and deepen, and the landscape has that burnished look, as if it’s been drenched in honey and ripened by sun. The world seems balanced; we stand at the brink of September, at the edge of the turn of the […]
Posted inRange
Attracting attention
By some accounts, the eyes of the world were on my little mountain town on Aug. 23. That’s because Salida, Colo., was the starting point for the first stage of the week-long USA Pro Cycling Challenge race that wends through the Colorado mountains. Competitors come from all over the globe, and so do the TV […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
River rafting — no car required
One reason I live in the West is that taking a car or plane to enjoy nature always struck me as paradoxical. How can a hiker, biker, skier or camper claim to “leave no trace” when his or her carbon footprint exceeds Bigfoot’s by several orders of magnitude? No, I said, let the Sherpas summit […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bear-fighting poodles and Muslim dust storms
WASHINGTON Size mattered not a whit during a backyard encounter in the town of Kirkland, in northwest Washington, that pitted a “yapping teacup poodle” against a 200-pound black bear, reports The Week magazine. The tiny dog acted so ferocious that the bear climbed a tree, leaped into an adjoining yard and hightailed it back to […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
A life in the wild
Wolfer: A MemoirCarter Niemeyer374 pages, softcover: $17.99.BottleFly Press, 2010. Former federal trapper and shooter Carter Niemeyer, the author of the memoir Wolfer, seems an unlikely advocate for wolves and other predators. A “wolfer,” after all, is a person who kills wolves, a job with its genesis in the great wildlife extermination campaigns that are as […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
The Taj Mahal, the pyramids – and HCN?
Sam Fox crossed visiting HCN off his personal “bucket list” when he came by our Paonia, Colo., office with Erin Drake. Sam pitched some cool story ideas and noted his successful track record — over the past decade he’s suggested other ideas that we’ve used for stories. The Fort Collins, Colo., duo chatted with Executive […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Adventuring on Colorado’s big peaks
I rank them by altitude and tackle them one set at a time: the 200 highest, then the tricentennials. I’m told I was the first woman to climb Colorado’s 100 highest peaks; mathematical precision makes the task seem manageable. There are 638 mountains in the Colorado Rockies over 13,000 feet high. I’d climb them all, […]
Posted inWotr
Hats off for a grand American senator, Mark O. Hatfield, 1922-2011
Some people called former Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield, who died Aug. 7 at age 89, “Saint Mark,” for his outspoken Christian faith and his teetotaling habit. Mark O. Hatfield was a man of integrity, but a saint he wasn’t — and thank goodness for that. He was the kind of leader many of us wish […]
Posted inWotr
Food safety is a matter of power
In Venice, Calif., the Rawesome raw-food club was raided Aug. 3 by armed federal and county agents who arrested a volunteer and seized computers, files, cash and $70,000 worth of perishable produce. Club founder and manager James Stewart, 64, was charged with 13 counts, 12 of them related to the processing and sale of unpasteurized […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Rainbow gatherings and border art
WASHINGTON You have to hand it to the 12,000-to-15,000 people who traipse every summer to some national forest — usually in the West — where they live for a week as reunited friends who call themselves the Rainbow Family of Living Light. They’ve had 40 years of practice, so they’ve learned how to avoid leaving […]
Posted inBlog
Killer compost
As you know, there has been considerable debate over the last several years about the high costs associated with organic and less-processed foods . Everyone (well nearly everyone) agrees that fresh produce and meat, minimally tainted with hormones, pesticides, and preservatives, are key ingredients in a healthy lifestyle for both people and the rest of […]