Richard Pak pilots an old green Land Rover along the gravel roads of Barrow, Alaska, as he does most every day. It’s June, but the air is raw and the sky is the color of impending snow, like ash poured into milk. He indicates a spot where a polar bear recently wandered up from the […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Ganjanomics: bringing Humboldt’s shadow economy into the light
One evening last October, I met with Anna Hamilton in the Northern California town of Garberville. A singer-songwriter with a barbwire voice, Hamilton is known locally for her radio show, Rant and Rave, Lock and Load and Shoot Your Mouth Off — which, it turns out, is a pretty good description of her approach to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Guns and Arizona congressmen, airplane blowouts
COLORADO On hot summer days at the Aspen Airport, private planes from all over the world crowd the tarmac. For some reason, the pilot of an eight-seater Citation X decided that the afternoon of July 1 was the perfect time to gun the engines and do a high-powered “gauge test.” Unfortunately, the pilot failed to […]
Posted inRange
Rural unemployment slightly better in Interior West and Plains than elsewhere
By Bill Bishop, the Daily Yonder (click to view larger) Unemployment in rural counties turned up sharply in June, cracking nine percent for the first time since March. The rural unemployment rates rose from 8.7% in May to 9.2% in June. Unemployment in rural America remains lower than in urban counties or in the nation […]
Posted inRange
Lewis, Clark and Darwin
Charles Darwin wasn’t born until three years after the Lewis & Clark Expedition was over, but evolutionary science is shedding a new light on a question that has perplexed me and other history buffs about their epic journey. Here’s the question: Why were the Indians so friendly to Lewis & Clark? The answer might just […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Portraits of the frontier West: A review of Western Heritage
Western Heritage: A Selection of Wrangler Award-Winning ArticlesEdited by Paul Andrew Hutton305 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. Geronimo, Crazy Horse and the Texas Rangers all have dramatic cameos in Western Heritage, Paul Andrew Hutton’s anthology of award-winning essays. Since 1961, Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum has given its annual Wrangler […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Welcome, new interns!
Two new interns have just joined our editorial department for six months of “journalism boot camp” here in Paonia, Colo. “I was the shy nerd in school,” says Kimberly Hirai of Boise, Idaho. When she and her brother ordered pizza as kids, they fought over who had to talk on the phone. She’s more outgoing […]
Posted inRange
A tale of three women conservationists
In the beginning, there was only water as far as the eye could see, according to the Chemehuevi Indians, who once traversed the rocky peaks and steep slopes of what is now Joshua Tree National Park. Ocean Woman, afloat on a woven boat with wolf, mountain lion and coyote, created the land by rubbing dead […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
A Western mystery with an environmental twist: a review of Buried by the Roan
Buried by the RoanMark Stevens346 pages, softcover: $14.95.People’s Press, 2011. In his second mystery novel, Buried by the Roan, Colorado writer Mark Stevens tells a “ripped from the headlines” story involving natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The story is set in and around the Roan Plateau area between Glenwood Springs and Meeker, […]
Posted inWotr
Bootstrapping in Roundup
The morning of May 26, the town of Roundup in central Montana became separated from the world. The Musselshell River, normally a lazy brown trickle, had been transformed overnight into a raging monster a half-mile wide that swept away everything in its path. In the wee hours, the sheriff’s department received word from 20 miles […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Wedding in the shadowed valley
When I got married, my husband was in the midst of a slide into bipolar disorder that would last for years, nearly kill us both, and ultimately end our marriage. I hadn’t told many people about what was going on. Nor had I thought to reconsider my decision to get married. We had already been […]
Posted inRange
BLM issues final EIS for Over the River
The federal Bureau of Land Management has issued a final Environmental Impact Statement for the controversial “Over the River” art installation. Proposed by the artist Christo and his late wife Jeanne Claude, the project would suspend nearly six total miles of translucent fabric in various spots along a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River between […]
Posted inRange
Naming the wind
Living in the West means living with the wind. Some of our winds even have names like chinook, dust devil, black roller and blue norther. Many of us learned of another name this July, when a “haboob” struck Phoenix. It’s a blinding dust storm, provoked by strong gusts from a thunderstorm. The National Weather Service […]
Posted inRange
Dental boot camp brings services to Alaska natives
BETHEL, Alaska — Conan Murat has a tough schedule. About every other week he packs up a portable dental office, checks his groceries, sleeping bags and other supplies, then he flies to one of his 13 assigned remote villages in the Yukon-Kushkokwin Delta. Then remote is a relative word: Murat’s base is Aniak, some 90 […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
An L.A. story, in incidents and rhythms: A review of The Book of Want
The Book of Want: A NovelDaniel A. Olivas144 pages, softcover: $16.95.University of Arizona Press, 2011. “I want … I want everything. Everything that makes life beautiful.” So says Conchita, one of the many characters in Los Angeles writer Daniel Olivas’ The Book of Want. That Conchita is a voluptuous, amorous, unmarried 62-year-old with a penchant […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Building a bridge to love: A review of Randy Lopez Goes Home
Randy Lopez Goes Home: A NovelRudolfo Anaya168 pages, hardcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. No one in the village of Agua Bendita, N.M., remembers Randy Lopez when he returns — not even his own godparents. Did he stay away too long, seeking wisdom among the gringos? Has he lost his identity? Is Sofia, his true […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
HCN enters the digital world
On a beautiful blue-skied June weekend, the High Country News Board of Directors gathered at our headquarters in Paonia, Colo., to discuss everything from how the editorial staff develops story ideas to the ongoing evolution of digital technology. A presentation by staff on plans to roll out HCN content for mobile phones, tablet computers and […]
Posted inRange
Three Books from Indian Country
Here are my three picks for the best in summer reading: 1. Walter Echo-Hawk’s In the Courts of the Conquerors: The Ten Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided. 2. Roberta Ulrich’s American Indian Nations from Termination to Restoration, 1953-2006. 3. Alison Owings’ Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans. Echo-Hawk’s book ought to retire the entire […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The criminals who built the West
IDAHO Jeffrey John Shaw was not what you’d call a “natural” rancher when he moved to Marsing, Idaho, population 890, in the mid-1990s. He had a thick Boston accent, knew beans about cattle, and wore bib overalls and straw hats that were a little over-the-top country, says a neighbor. But he gained the trust of […]