Wonderful things are everywhere — but you have to pay attention in order to see them.
Communities
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Tribe denies trash
Editors Note: This piece is cross posted from Mother Earth Journal, where reporter Terri Hansen writes about indigenous people and the environment. SPOKANE, Wash.—At the last minute, the Yakama Nation blocked a bid by Hawaii to ship their household garbage to a landfill that sits amid their ancestral lands in south central Washington State. U.S. […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Crime crackdown in Indian Country
A federal effort to improve public safety on reservations gets a rocky start
Posted inWotr
Remembering Trixie at county fair time
Memories of a Wyoming barrel racer and a moment in the winner’s circle
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Discovery and recovery in a Mojave casino town
Going Through GhostsMary Sojourner296 pages, softcover: $25.University of Nevada Press, 2010. Shadows inhabit every corner of Mary Sojourner’s newest novel, Going Through Ghosts — spirits of ancestors and deceased friends, fragments of characters’ souls. The settings — casino coffee shops, riverside benches, buses — are places a Westerner will recognize as haunts of the lonely […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Of rivers, boats and baseball umpires
Another Waythe River Has:Taut True Talesfrom the NorthwestRobin Cody208 pages, softcover: $18.95.Oregon State University Press, 2010. Robin Cody inspired me to buy a kayak. A confirmed landlubber, it didn’t occur to me to become familiar with my local waterways until I read Cody’s eclectic collection of essays, Another Way the River Has: Taut True Tales […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Private equity not prudent for tribes
“The Ute Paradox” was well-written and thoroughly researched (HCN, 7/19/10). However, I have devoted 22 years of my working life to the Southern Utes’ success, and must respectfully disagree with some of Jonathan Thompson’s conclusions. The article states that “Mr. Jurrius … brought capital from a huge private equity firm with which the tribe was […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Some notable arson wildfire cases in the West
Sidebar to “The Fiery Touch”
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Summer Visitors
Along with cherries and apricots, summer always brings a bountiful crop of visitors to our offices in Paonia, Colo. Author and photographer Dave Showalter came by on a Western Slope trip from his home in Arvada, Colo. He’s working on a conservation book depicting the beauty of the West’s sagebrush ecosystem and the many threats […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
The Fiery Touch
Wildfire arsonists burn forests, grasslands and houses — and kill people. Now one faces the death penalty.
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
The wealthy shouldn’t whine
In regards to the article “Health studies gas up,” I am frustrated at Ms. Waldholz’s lack of perspective (HCN, 6/21/10). While I agree wholeheartedly with all the measures to safeguard the public health and the health of the environment discussed in this article, I can’t help getting upset by who is doing the complaining: wealthy […]
Posted inRange
Over the River controversy continues
The Bulgarian-born artist Christo specializes in gigantic installations — like wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin, or arranging hundreds of fabric gates in New York City’s Central Park. For the past decade or so, he’s had plans to return to Colorado with “Over the River.” (His first Colorado project, an immense curtain in Rifle Gap, was about […]
Posted inWotr
Dressing for success in the mosquito-ridden West
Rain in the West is always an occasion for celebration, and this year in South Dakota we’ve had a lot of moisture to celebrate. To complain about this would be against the code of the West; heck, the code doesn’t let us complain about stuff like broken arms or legs, either. Several neighbors casually mentioned […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2010: The Ute Paradox
Case in point
Artifacts roadshow connects archaeologists to lost treasures
Posted inWotr
The atomic bomb and me
This year, the bomb and I became senior citizens. We were both born 65 years ago at nearly the same time in different parts of the West. Since then, nuclear reality has come to define everybody’s lives. But for me there’s even more of a connection, because of the radiation still lurking inside my body […]
Posted inWotr
The Gulf spill catastrophe can be a goad to do the right thing
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from BP’s disastrous oil spill, it’s how missed opportunities can come back to haunt you. One glaring example has received little attention, however. Back in 1965, Congress began funding land conservation through royalties from offshore oil and gas production, believing that the environmental cost of developing the outer continental […]
Posted inGoat
In defense of a rock
When I was in the fourth grade south of San Francisco, I squirted a glob of Elmers glue onto an index card, pressed a rock into it, and used a black felt tip pen to write a pretty cool sounding word beneath my specimen: Serpentine. Then, I added a brief description on the card in […]
Posted inWotr
Bison are flourishing, but not always in the right place
Though images of bison aren’t the first thing that pop into mind when you think of Grand Canyon, the animals that lumber like walking boulders have become a significant attraction for visitors to the North Rim. The bison are part of a herd that was introduced to the Kaibab Plateau in the early 1900s, courtesy […]