I first met Tom Bell over 40 years ago. He remains one of the most courageous men I’ve ever known and something of a hero to me (HCN, 8/30/10). Here is Wyoming, a state where the leading radio station daily broadcasts hours of Rush Limbaugh’s bombast to eager listeners. Here is a state that can field a viable […]
Communities
Posted inOctober 1, 2010: Dancing with Climate Change
Give-’em-hell Bell
With his courage and fierce determination to save Western lands and wildlife, HCN founder and guiding muse Tom Bell is a true prophet (HCN, 8/30/10). A conservationist in the mold of Thoreau, Muir and Leopold, Bell deserves our respect and esteem for his noble fight against avaricious mining and ranching interests hell-bent on pursuing profit at […]
Posted inOctober 1, 2010: Dancing with Climate Change
A Bell-wether for the young
In 1963, I was a youngster in a grade school science class, when an instructor demonstrated that fish required oxygen through an experiment that diminished the O2 content of a fishbowl till the goldfish passed out. The instructor noted the efficacy of the experiment but said that he worried about the state of the fish […]
Posted inWotr
Stealing the West, bone by bone
Early morning sunrise washed over the Colorado National Monument outside Grand Junction as I headed for a boulder-strewn knoll. There, 110 years ago, paleontologist Elmer Riggs discovered a previously unknown dinosaur that we now call Brachiosaurus. When it was alive some 150 million years ago, the plant-eating dinosaur measured 75 feet or more from teeth […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Doomster chorus
Note: This is a sidebar to a profile of the founder of High Country News and his increasingly pessimistic view of the future, headlined, “A Hell of an Anniversary.” — “… A simple look at the upward path of global greenhouse-gas emissions (indicates) we will continue to squeeze the trigger on the gun we have […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The Western Lit Blues
I’m-a-gettin’ tired of living up to my fictional counterpart
Posted inRange
Death by suicide
By Clarence Worly, NewWest.net Guest Writer, 9-22-10 Between 1999 and 2007 there were nearly as many suicides as highway fatalities in the Mountain West states. In the case of Colorado, Utah and Nevada there were more self-inflicted deaths than traffic deaths. Am I the only person west of the Mississippi to see a problem here? […]
Posted inWotr
What we don’t admit about wildfire
Arizona had no big wildfires burning in early September, so in Flagstaff where I live, all eyes turned toward Boulder. The most destructive fire in Colorado history was raging out of control and we all wanted to watch. We couldn’t resist. I think it’s in our DNA. The internal combustion engine, electricity, the Internet — […]
Posted inRange
The difficult windows of September
Often I have observed that September is our reward for putting up with Colorado the rest of the year: Generally clear skies, warm sunny days that don’t get too hot, brisk mornings, glowing aspen leaves — what’s not to like? Well, as the nights get cooler — our first killing frost typically arrives around Sept. […]
Posted inWotr
A wild area gets a reprieve
Lovers of wild open spaces in northwest Colorado recently received some long-awaited great news. The Bureau of Land Management’s Little Snake Field Office announced that it would close 77,000 acres of the magnificent Vermillion Basin to oil and gas development. The agency’s decision came as a result of a well-publicized public process. Nonetheless, Moffat County […]
Posted inArticles
“Curious about the human condition”
A conversation with Western writer Philip Fradkin
Posted inWotr
The problem of Western water is not what you think
The dirty little secret about Western water is that water conservation is a hoax, or at best a waste of time. When we conserve water by using less, we don’t save it for the health of the watershed or put it aside in any way; we simply make it available for someone else to consume, […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The Second Second City
A native Chicagoan who now lives in Montana discovers New Chicago, Mont.
Posted inBlog
Taking action on hunger
Stimulus money might have a chance to stimulate appetites with a series of new grants in New Mexico. New data on poverty and food access suggest, though, it might not be enough to quiet hunger in the West’s most food insecure state or elsewhere in the region. First, the encouraging news. In August, New Mexico […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
What was and what is
Joan Kane’s work aims to bridge the gap between past and present
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Guests in the house of fire
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. For once, fire has remained absent from our home landscape this summer. Winter was so long and wet as to have repressed fire season, and it seems strange that our home mountain, valley, and […]
Posted inWotr
Love wilderness? Thank a veteran
Some of the environmental movement’s greatest heroes were also heroes of World War II
Posted inWotr
I liked it better when being born here was enough
If the 14th Amendment is repealed, how do we know we’re citizens at all?