Ahem. The Eagle has landed. At approximately fourteen hundred hours today, an eighteen-wheeler rolled through town here in Paonia, Colorado, right past the front windows of High Country News, on a curious mission. Naturally, we went out to investigate. And so we discovered … the ConferenceBike. Pause, please, and meditate on this photo.
Communities
Posted inWotr
Winterkill
Not far from where I live, in northwestern Montana, the land opens up and the people disappear. Skiing through tall trees toward a ridge, we see two ravens chasing a magpie through a glade up ahead. A moment later, three bald eagles appear, all sitting at the very top of trees. These normally quiet woods […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
March Madness in Indian Country
Wyoming Indian High School dominates the basketball court
Posted inWotr
A devotee of a new kind of retail therapy
My daughter and I found the perfect sofa on the way to school today. It was just the size and color I was looking to add to the living room. Unfortunately, someone had dumped it upside down in the mud of my neighbor’s front yard. Apparently it took too much energy to have a garage […]
Posted inWotr
Oregon halts corporate affluenza
Tea Party activists across the country probably shuddered with horror when they read what Oregonians did at the polls recently. But for a majority of us who live in this state of rain, big trees and mighty rivers, voting for new taxes during an economic downturn was common sense. For the first time since 1930, […]
Posted inGoat
How much carbon is “In My Tree”?
The grunge band Pearl Jam is known for being loud — and for being socially and environmentally conscious. The rockers deserve more applause this week, after announcing they will mitigate their emissions for their 2009 tour, one tree at a time. The band’s giving $210,000 to the Cascade Land Conservancy to help restore urban forests […]
Posted inWotr
Mountain towns and the persistence of the weird
Chicken-picken’s no more, but skitching thrives
Posted inWotr
Between the grims and the grins
Do you believe in technology? I sure do. I came of age when electric typewriters were somewhat novel, a telephone call to a town only 10 miles away was long distance and a 30-volume set of World Britannica represented an exhaustive knowledge base. How quaint. But will technology enable us to stop polluting the atmosphere […]
Posted inBlog
Open space justice
Last week was Spring Break. While I can no longer afford to take the entire week off from work, I could not let the week pass without some time for myself away from the classroom and clinic. Luckily, I was able to spend three amazing days backpacking in the Superstition Mountains, about an hour outside […]
Posted inBlog
Readers wield their fiery pens
High Country News readers have always been an opinionated bunch. You weigh in on whether you agree or disagree with what’s been reported, provide unique perspectives and often set us straight with additional facts and details about complicated issues. For 40 years, your letters have encouraged and inspired the staff, connected the far-flung community of […]
Posted inArticles
Gary Nabhan remembers Stewart Udall
Former Interior Secretary known for vision, decency and conservation.
Posted inGoat
Popcorn Activism
The trailer for the new documentary Gasland lasts all of 15 seconds: a man turns on the kitchen tap. He holds a match up to the flowing water and FWOOSH–foot-high flames leap toward the ceiling. Dramatic, yes, but perhaps old news to Westerners who know the possible dangers of natural gas drilling. Thanks to a […]
Posted inArticles
Just journalism, or hegemonic narrative?
An environmental justice activist responds to HCN’s coverage
Posted inWotr
Good fences don’t mangle wildlife
This winter a small tragedy took place on a ridge above the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana near where I live. I was nearly home when two neighbors out for a walk frantically flagged my truck down. They’d found a deer silently struggling, hanging upside down by one back leg, gripped in a loop of […]
Posted inGoat
The death of a giant
Stewart Udall passed away on March 20. His conservation accomplishments in the West are legendary (although he wasn’t always an environmental hero; as an Arizona representative, he voted to dam Glen Canyon). Our 2004 feature on Udall summed up his legacy (and that of his brother Mo): Stewart served three terms as an Arizona congressman, […]
Posted inRange
A promise kept
The three most important things to know about what health care reform means to Indian Country are simple ideas. First, the United States, officially and permanently, recognizes its trust and treaty obligation for health care delivery to American Indians and Alaska Natives. Second, there will be more money (not enough, but more) pumped into the […]
Posted inGoat
Predator control, Alaska-style
In Alaska, it’s once again time for one of the state’s major rites of spring — the aerial shooting of wolves. In five management areas around the state, Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game has decided that there aren’t enough moose and caribou, and that the answer is to shoot more wolves. In the Fortymile […]
Posted inGoat
Wheatpastin’ the Rez
During the last year or so, a new kind of “graffiti” has been showing up on abandoned buildings, old billboards and rusted out oil tanks on the Navajo Nation. A street artist who goes by the name of Jetsonorama (who sometimes works with another artist, Yote, and No Reservation Required) has been plastering these places […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Untold tales of the American frontier
Images of the black experience in the West
Posted inBlog
Location, location, location
Last week, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter announced a preliminary agreement between the state, Xcel Energy, and some of the region’s traditional environmental groups over a plan to reduce air pollution along the Front Range by retrofitting, repowering (with natural gas), and even possibility retiring a number of urban coal-fired power plants. Although we have to […]