Marine Sisk-Franco has been a Winnemem Wintu Indian for all of her years, and the Northern California tribe’s way of life is all she knows. She’s the daughter of the tribe’s chief and their headman, she’s danced and sung at their ceremonies, and, in 2006, she bravely endured racial taunts and threats from drunken power […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
The lesson of earthquake and tsunami: never forget
The most important image from the disaster that rocked Japan last month might be one that was never captured by anyone’s camera. It has to be conjured up from words: The mayor of a town on the Sanriku coast north of Sendai races to the top of the three-story city hall to escape the tsunami […]
Posted inWotr
Elite club blocked from logging giant redwoods
For now, at least, the chain saws are off-limits at the Bohemian Grove, the woody retreat of America’s rich and powerful. The Bohemian Club, an all-male bastion synonymous with wealth and influence, had big plans for its private enclave on the Russian River, 75 miles north of San Francisco. Too big, as it turns out. […]
Posted inWotr
We keep annoying Sheila, our GPS navigator
As a career country gal, I take pride in finding the most efficient — or at least the shortest — route between two points. In our mountain country of Wyoming, that is not always a straight line or even the distance the proverbial crow can fly. And whoever thought that following crows was a good […]
Posted inWotr
Walking the dog in a changed community
“Leash your dog, Wilke.” The phone message was innocuous enough. The only problem being I didn’t know the man’s name or phone number, and five minutes earlier he’d threatened to kill my dog. Our first encounter was last spring. I walked my dog, Ricky, through the block of condo subdivisions west of my home, as […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Oregon sculptor turns beach trash into meaningful art
South of Bandon, Ore., along Highway 101, there perches a 12-foot-tall bird with wings made of flip-flop soles and a belly of plastic lids. Its fishing-float feet are held in place by knotted plastic fishing line. The bird, which resembles the love child of an albatross, an eagle and a seagull, is just one of […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Finding reassurance in change: a review of Wild Comfort
Wild Comfort: The Solace of NatureKathleen Dean Moore256 pages,softcover: $15.95.Trumpeter Books, 2010. Writer, editor and activist Kathleen Dean Moore was settling in to write her next book when a series of personal tragedies changed everything. After several people close to her died within a few months, Moore abandoned her plans to create a book about […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Spring fever, skipped issue
In mid-March, as the snow melts and the crocus pop up here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox around April 18. In the meantime, be sure to visit hcn.org for news, blog posts, and other Web-only […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Teetering on the Edge of the Cedars
Utah museum fights for its life as the state cuts funding
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The dark corners of the heart: A review of Volt
Volt: StoriesAlan Heathcock208 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2011. A good story has the power to divert us from our struggles as well as to help us understand them. This is one reason people turn to fiction, and it explains why Alan Heathcock’s debut short-story collection, Volt, is an ideal book for our times. Characters face […]
Posted inWotr
Marry me, marry my town
I am not just marrying a man; I am marrying a town. In my first, brief marriage, my husband and I were both newcomers to the Alaskan town where we spent our married life. The locals weren’t particularly invested in us. Instead, they waited with the patience of the seasoned to see if we could […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Unheard stories, unseen lives: A review of Southern Paiute, A Portrait
Southern Paiute: A PortraitWilliam Logan Hebner and Michael L. Plyler208 pages, hardcover: $34.95.Utah State University Press, 2010. In all of Native America, few people have been less understood or more maligned than the Southern Paiute Indians and their desert cousins. Mark Twain denounced them as “inferior to even the despised digger Indians of California.” Except […]
Posted inWotr
Christo can wrap anything, but why bother?
The debate over the artist Christo’s latest scheme – he wants to canopy part of the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado in 2014 — shouldn’t simply be about art. Rather, it should be viewed as a jobs proposal, and on that ground I’d say, Why not? Certainly, Christo is an artist, maybe even the century’s […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The rules of intrusion
I have enjoyed reading HCN and Craig Childs’ writing over the years — until now (HCN, 2/21/11). As a high school librarian in Kayenta, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation, I often reach for an issue of HCN when a student isn’t reading. Students are proud to see tribal topics being covered and discussed in such […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Kudos, times two
Thanks for two superb articles: Craig Childs’ essay, “Ghosts, walking,” and Jim Stiles’ opinion piece, “Words that reverberate, words of hate” (HCN, 2/21/11). The former elegantly evokes the emotions canyon country kindles, while Stiles reminds us that it takes two poles to create polarization. We all need to be able to sit in between and […]
Posted inWotr
It’s March and all is well, right?
As I write this in March, it’s raining. A moist flow has set in, and we’re looking forward to a spring full of wildflowers: Indian paint brush, sego lilies, penstemon. It’s a wet cycle in the high desert of southern Utah. Not only is it raining, we’ve had more snow this winter than we’ve seen […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Running into winter
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. When my father-in-law’s sixtieth rolled around we got together as a family and asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Without hesitating he replied, “I want you all to run a half marathon […]
Posted inRange
The myth of rural subsidies
By Brian Depew Living in cities makes us smarter, more efficient and more innovative and rural life would not be possible without a “raft of subsidies devoted to sustaining it.” That is the claim made by Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein in a series of posts last week (one, two, three and four). Klein was […]
Posted inBlog
America’s Great Outdoors Diversity Initiative
Protecting the environment for future generations is great idea. In fact it’s a notion so simple that you might wonder why it took a White House committee ten months, 52 public listening sessions and a 116-page document to express what any lover of nature knows by heart. Unveiled in February by President Obama, America’s Great […]
Posted inWotr
A prodigal son is honored by his hometown
It’s not only war heroes who get honored in the West with lasting memorials. When prodigal son Dalton Trumbo finally returned to his hometown of Grand Junction, Colo., he arrived on Main Street in a bronze bathtub. After four years, despite rain and snow, he’s still there, and some residents still can’t figure out if […]