Plant disease threatens traditions of California tribes.
Communities
Posted inWotr
How a small town resembles Facebook
“I’m looking for a crib,” I said, and my friends reacted predictably. “I’m so out of touch!” lamented one, while another asked if I had an announcement to make, then raced over to my wife’s spot to ask if she was pregnant. The unusual aspect of this small-town rumor-mongering was its location. We weren’t in […]
Posted inGoat
Will money talk?
It’s a sweet-voiced, normal-looking middle-aged woman who looks sincerely at the camera and tells us that she’s one of millions of Californians who want to pay taxes on marijuana, legalizing her drug of choice and helping to refill the state’s empty coffers (the taxes could fund 20,000 teacher salaries, she says). This is an ad […]
Posted inGoat
Duwamish not dead
Next week, Cecile Hansen, a direct descendant of Seattle’s namesake Chief Sealth, will travel from one Washington to another. Hansen, the chairwoman of the Duwamish tribe, has been invited to testify in D.C. at an upcoming hearing on H.R. 2678, a bill introduced in the House that would grant the Western Washington tribe the federal […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Of moose and mandolins
AGE 30HOMETOWN Broadview Heights, OhioOCCUPATION Environmental scientist with the EPAHCN READER SINCE 2002 Elaine Lai stopped by High Country News on a sunny day in early May. She works for the wastewater unit of the Environmental Protection Agency, and had driven over from her Denver office to write a permit for the federal fish hatchery […]
Posted inGoat
Blue horses: riding on moonlight
I step out of my shack beneath a waxing half moon. Milky light pours down on northern Arizona. Scattered ponderosas march across the bunchgrasses of Government Prairie, casting oval shadows to the west of each tree. As usual, my walk takes me along the fence line. A cloud shutters the moon. Across the barb-wire, two huge silhouettes emerge […]
Posted inGoat
The glorious Fourth
Like hundreds of small towns around the West, Paonia will celebrate the Fourth of July with a parade down the main drag (Grand Avenue, in our case) and festivities in the park. It’s the annual Cherry Days event, some 62 years old, awash in tradition and punctuated by occasional sparks of innovation. There will be […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“God ain’t a great co-pilot”
Christopher Hitchens and his godless views attracted only a dozen cadets from the Air Force Academy recently, probably because the get-together, which took place at a Colorado Springs restaurant, was forbidden on campus. An Academy spokesman said Hitchens was not welcome because he’d made comments that were “degrading to others,” reports the Colorado Springs Independent. […]
Posted inGoat
Mountain people
Let’s start with this: mountain people do not curse the weather. They have slept out in the rain and know that the weather will change. They know that just to be around—under any sort of sky—is good luck enough. Mountain people have crooked grins and broken hearts and dirt under their fingernails. They are unimpressed […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Scrounging in Seattle
A 2-year-old black bear, sympathetically described by wildlife experts as lonely, scared and kicked out of home by his mother, raced around Seattle backyards recently, for days eluding police, who dubbed him the “urban phantom.” Kim Chandler, a Washington state Fish and Wildlife officer, told the Seattle Times that the 125-pound bear was as wily […]
Posted inWotr
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Soused in the saddle
A police sergeant in Arvada, Colo., said that in his 15 years in law enforcement, he’d never charged a guy on a horse with drunk driving. But when the tipsy rider ambled into a busy strip mall on his horse, you couldn’t help but notice that he was falling out of the saddle, reported 9news.com. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Houseboaters beware
During the West’s last nine years of drought, the level of Lake Mead, which backs up behind Hoover Dam, has plummeted 100 vertical feet, causing unexpected and peculiar things to happen. Where there used to be flat water with no pizzazz on the reservoir’s edge 120 miles east of Las Vegas, a dangerous rapid has […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Visitors from underground
VISITORS FROM UNDERGROUNDPat Jablonsky and Bill Yett of nearby Delta stopped in to our Paonia, Colo., office to renew their subscription and tell us about their recent trip to New Mexico’s Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area. They showed us astonishing photos of the Snowy River passage, named for the miles-long formation of bright […]
Posted inGoat
An end to the “Snow War”?
Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, Arizona skiers may soon be spared the inconvenience of living in one of the Union’s warmest and driest states. Last week the high court removed the final legal hurdle blocking Arizona Snowbowl from making artificial snow with reclaimed sewage effluent on the San Francisco Peaks—a plan which 13 southwestern tribes […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
See you in July
This will be the last issue you receive for a month; we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around July 20, and in the meantime, visit hcn.org for fresh blog posts, new Writers on the Range columns and other exciting content. VISITORSOn her only day […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
The other Trail of Tears
Selling Your Father’s Bones: America’s 140-Year War Against the Nez Perce TribeBrian Schofield 368 pages, hardcover: $26.00.Simon & Schuster, 2009. A white 30-something British guy might not seem like the obvious source to turn to for a definitive history of the persecution and flight of the Nez Perce — one of the most complex, tragic […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Yuck
Here’s a conundrum: How do you convince 2,000 backpackers to use human poop bags at a crowded camping area high in the mountains this summer? Over the years, Conundrum Hot Springs has become the most heavily visited overnight wilderness destination in the Aspen area. You might also call the 11,000-foot-high hot springs slob central: The […]
