Of Rock and Rivers: Seeking a Sense of Place in the American WestEllen Wohl267 pages, hardcover, $24.95.University of California Press, 2009. Ellen Wohl shudders when she sees houses built on gently sloping benches at the mouths of mountain clefts. She knows that such sites, with their incredible views, were created by past landslides, and hence […]
Communities
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Changing of the guard
We’d like to recognize the dedication and vision of two long-time board members who recently decided to step down. Both hail from Boulder, Colo. Felix Magowan, who joined in 2001, brought substantial publishing and financial expertise to High Country News; he was the founder of Inside Communications, which published Velo News and other outdoor titles […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
The wild home of hope
Rock Water Wild: An Alaskan LifeNancy Lord248 pages,hardcover: $24.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Alaska writer laureate Nancy Lord’s infatuation with that state dates back to a fourth-grade school project. Like so many transplants, she moved to the Far North to reinvent herself. Alaska’s remoteness, its low population density, natural wealth and often-harsh living conditions recall […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A ride on the Big Love bus
What with sensational court cases about forced marriage and the Big Love television series, it was probably only a matter of time before locals cashed in on the fascination with “polygs.” Now you can pay a fee to take “The Polygamy Experience Tour” with guides who once lived under the thumb of Warren Jeffs, the […]
Posted inRange
Reader Photo – Cowboy Up
This week’s reader photo is a classic Western image from a great photographer who’s shared a bunch of neat shots up on HCN’s Flickr Pool. Check them out and add yours!
Posted inGoat
Spectrum of sexuality
On the night of June 16, 2001, Fred Martinez, Jr. was walking home from a party when he was chased into a rocky canyon on the outskirts of Cortez, Colo. The 16-year-old Navajo was cornered in the chasm’s nightmarish shadows and bludgeoned to death. Police found his body five days later. The crime shocked the […]
Posted inWotr
Stopping by apples in the land of condos
My chicken-filled backyard in Bozeman, Mont., butts up against a square block of condominiums. The green fence between us is like a Berlin wall, separating noisy, itinerant college kids from our more stable neighborhood of families. It separates the mostly paved, over-parked, garbage-strewn and under-aged drinking zone that police call “Bourbon Street” from our homes. […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
The Lost Art of Listening
Can the Northern Arapaho save their language?
Posted inRange
Reader Photo – Red Aspen Leaves
I pondered featuring this reader photo a couple weeks ago, but ended up with a different choice. Today, though, the sparkling vermilion of these aspen leaves, now blanketing forest floors across the West, brought me a bright remembrance of Colorado’s autumn moments, which I wanted to share with you. Across most of the West it’s […]
Posted inWotr
Mystery unsolved — and that’s a good thing
For almost a year, the world thought the final chapter had been written about the life — and death — of a young artist and poet who mysteriously disappeared in the Southwest’s canyon country 75 years ago. His name was Everett Ruess, and at age 20, he was already fed up with modern life, preferring […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Weed picking
Who knew marijuana was the answer to the real estate industry’s prayers? It must be so, since the Denver Post announced in a giant headline: “Pot boom offsets real estate bust.” Voters first approved a medical marijuana amendment to the Colorado Constitution back in 2000, but the feds announced only recently that they wouldn’t prosecute […]
Posted inGoat
Bluegrass in red rock country
This past weekend, the HCN interns took a road trip out to nearby Moab, Utah, to experience some of the West’s most dramatic landscapes and hear some good ol’ tunes at the yearly folk festival. The sunset faded as we left Colorado, cruising through darkness on I-70 to the Cisco exit. On Utah State Route […]
Posted inNovember 9, 2009: Roadless-less
Gone in 60 seconds
Wheelin’ & dealin’ at the world’s biggest Western art auction
Posted inNovember 9, 2009: Roadless-less
The kindness of hunters
I despise guns. If a Winchester appears in a movie, I gnaw my fingernails, heart galloping. Firearms show a lack of imagination, I think; they slant the playing field, and sometimes threaten to tip the whole thing over. Recently, a student of mine penned a lyrical essay on the spirituality of hunting. I gave him […]
Posted inNovember 9, 2009: Roadless-less
‘Yes’ to desire and an end to fear
Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the FutureCharles Bowden243 pages, hardcover, $24.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. But as a desert man, I can only say yes to rain. — Charles Bowden Mulling over decades spent reporting on everything from border crimes to environmental destruction to post-Katrina New Orleans, journalist Charles Bowden declares an […]
Posted inNovember 9, 2009: Roadless-less
For farmers, small is beautiful
Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of AgribusinessLisa M. Hamilton309 pages, hardcover: $25.Counterpoint, 2009. Few of the authors behind the recent glut of information on — and the impassioned opinions about — our modern food system have done the obvious: Spend time with farmers. But in her new book, Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in […]