Kanab, UtahOn a crisp June morning in the heart of Sagebrush Rebel country, a steady stream of rental cars, minivans and SUVs flows north from Kanab on Highway 89, heading toward the serene, red-rock walls of Angel Canyon. As the highway curves, the landscape flickers through sun and shadows, the sandstone glowing like embers in […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
A poet whom readers won’t let go
Remembering William Stafford, a popular Northwestern poet
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 3
I can’t seem to sleep; I’m fighting a cold which makes breathing a conscious endeavor, but I think the real cause of my insomnia is the full moon. With a reflective boost from the January snow cover, our dark little corner of rural Colorado glows like a mall parking lot in the center of Denver, […]
Posted inArticles
High Country Views, A conversation with Michael Berman
In this episode of High Country Views, writer Pat Toomay sits down with acclaimed landscape photographer Michael Berman to talk about his craft and the draw of the desert. This podcast accompanies the story, “My walkabout with Michael,” and the slideshow, “Wilderness photographer.” Listen here! You can catch High Country Views approximately every […]
Posted inRange
Celebrating Martin Luther King Day
I know how to celebrate most holidays. On Independence Day, I reread the Declaration of Independence and watch fireworks after dark. To bring in the New Year, I try to stay up till midnight. On Thanksgiving I feast with family, and so on. But I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to celebrate on Martin […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: In Defense of Missiles
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. The hill from which I rant is good for many things: to hold our house up high into the teeth of the desert wind and generate an updraft on which harriers kite; to give […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 2
Snow has the amazing ability to visually soften the land. Here, snow has transformed a small boulder field on Colorado’s Grand Mesa into a sensuous series of drifts. I shot this one in color, but like it better in black and white. For a lively and informative update of this year’s remarkable snow conditions in […]
Posted inRange
Taking storms in stride
The Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude. It means something like “joy in the sorrow of others.” And I confess that it sometimes strikes me. But that’s not quite how I felt after watching accounts of the big blizzard at the end of 2010 in the Northeast that paralyzed cities, disrupted transportation and stranded […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
A long journey home
California tribe wants to bring back salmon from New Zealand
Posted inBlog
Not so simple living
What was your first exposure to ideas of environmental justice? Mine, I’m ashamed to say, was very low-key: I saw a bumper sticker. It was affixed to a co-worker’s car, back in the early 1980s, and it said, “Live Simply, That Others May Simply Live.” I was in college at the time, in a town […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Teaching Whitney to cook
Environmental awareness can be learned in the kitchen
Posted inGoat
2010: The year that was
Back when I was a High Country News intern, one of our contributing editors gave me and my comrades this bit of wisdom about our profession: Environmental news doesn’t break, it oozes. Looking back at HCN‘s year-in-stories, this truism resonates. The intractable issues that have defined our region for years — whether people and wolves can peacefully coexist in the […]