I’m curious as to why HCN‘s editors printed Craig Childs’ ghostwalking essay (HCN, 2/21/2011). By his own admission, Mr. Childs’ escapade took place in an “off-limits” area, where access was permitted “as long as nobody sees you.” Deliberately entering it was trespassing, pure and simple. Romanticizing Mr. Childs’ blatant disregard for the rights of others […]
Communities
Posted inArticles
Defriending Joe Hill: Stegner’s lesson for the Oscars
Like most people who write about the West, I think about Wallace Stegner a lot. He’s like a brilliant, beloved, occasionally exasperating uncle. He said many things first and best, and, though he could get a bit stuffy at times, we youngsters have to admit that — even now, almost two decades after his death […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
On the lam
WYOMING There’s nothing like a bunch of bad yaks to get the Cowboy State’s Legislature riled up. Woolly wanderers, these particular yaks have never been content to graze the grass growing solely on the “Yak Daddy Ranch” owned by John and Laura DeMetteis. The big guys routinely seek out other pastures and crash through fences […]
Posted inBlog
The price of “green” home improvement
Many Arizonans like to talk big about resenting federal intrusion and giveaways, but one recent giveaway appears to have been quite popular. While definitive statistics on installations in the Phoenix area are unavailable, an observer will certainly notice a good number of homes — especially in aging mid-century neighborhoods like mine — sporting efficient new […]
Posted inRange
Rocks on the road
The main highway into my town has just reopened after it was closed by a rockslide for most of last week, but I didn’t notice much disruption. Salida, Colo., was about as busy as it ever is during February. The rocks slid down a cliff at about 5 p.m. on Feb. 14, about a mile […]
Posted inWotr
Let me tell you about a real winter
One day last week it was cold — really cold — but not quite record-breaking. The weatherman reported that the record for the day was set back in 1979: 31 degrees below zero. I checked my old ranch notebook, and yes, 1979 was quite a winter. We’d kept the cattle on the range in Wyoming […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Collateral damage
When the Killing’s DoneT.C. Boyle384 pages, hardcover: $ 26.95.Viking, 2011. One of the West’s most prolific and trenchant novelists returns to a theme he previously explored in Tooth and Claw and A Friend of the Earth: our interactions with nature and their repercussions. T.C. Boyle’s characters often root for the environment. The tension and narrative […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Craig Childs walks with desert ghosts on the Navajo Nation
The dogs are getting closer, barking through junipers about a half-mile away. We douse our small can stove, scoop the rest of breakfast into our mouths, and within two minutes are gone. The day before, we were dropped off on a dirt two-track where we hopped a gate and smuggled ourselves into the wilderness atop […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Cy-board meeting
In late January, the High Country News board of directors met via Web and phone. With a headset and a smile, Board President Florence Williams marched more than a dozen board and staff members through an agenda that included finances, editorial direction, marketing capacity and what skills the board would like to add to its […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 7
The west side of the Colorado Rockies has its own unique weather patterns. Winter storms that smother the mountains to the east in dense, gray clouds, often break up over the valleys, leaving seams of clear sky that, at sundown, produce spectacular light shows. This shot includes a lower flank of Grand Mesa above Hotchkiss, […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Plenty of wood in the pile
Recently, as I was starting home on foot, a neighbor who lives up the road from me stopped at the row of mailboxes along the highway. He knows that if I want a ride, I’ll ask. So instead, he says, “How’s your wood pile?” “Getting low. Yours?” He has a big truck, a big chainsaw, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Hey, that’s my hay”
NEVADA “Forget the needle; it’s the haystack that Nevada sheriff’s deputies are looking for,” reports The Associated Press. Thieves driving a long-bed pickup have been swiping hay at night, targeting a ranch about 15 miles southeast of Elko, Nev. In the third and latest incident, some 2,000 pounds of hay disappeared from the ranch where […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Rural California schoolkids learn from fire-damaged forest
Sidney Deschenes is still haunted by the Moonlight Fire of 2007: The clouds of choking smoke that blew down from flaming mountains onto the valley that’s been her home since kindergarten. The rain of embers that ignited spot fires near homes at the edge of the forest and forced her family to evacuate three times. […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: The Ghost of Silver Hills
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. A decade ago, when we first scouted the rural high country where we ultimately bought land and built our home, there weren’t many folks out here from whom to get stories of whatever might […]
Posted inGoat
Teaching climate change in coal country
In the Powder River Basin, on a vast, grassy plain between the Big Horn Mountains and the Black Hills, the city of Gillette, Wyoming sits on top of America’s largest coal deposit. So close is the city to the strip mines that students at Campbell County High School can look out the window and see […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
A Nez Perce elder spreads love for lamprey
Elmer Crow waits patiently while a crowd of fifth-graders settles on the lawn outside the Morrison Knudson Nature Center in Boise, Idaho. One by one, the students stop squirming as they realize that the Nez Perce elder is watching them, hands folded behind his back. Crow’s face is solemn but his eyes are playful. The […]
Posted inRange
Official State Guns
As Betsy Marston noted in Heard Around the West recently, Utah lawmakers are considering an Official State Gun: the .45-caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol, designed a century ago for the U.S. Army and still in use by some American military personnel. It’s also a popular pistol for target-shooting and concealed-carry. The Utah connection is that the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Glimpses of the high desert
Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert HomeEllen Waterston144 pages, softcover: $18.95.Oregon State University Press, 2010. In 1973, Ellen Waterston, a New England transplant, and her husband drove into the high desert of eastern Oregon. “In our rundown pickup with Montana plates and a cab-over camper we looked more like evacuees from the Dust […]