In a tribute celebrating the 100th birthday of Western writer Wallace Stegner, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan recently wrote that if Señor Stegner were here to blow out the candles on his cake, he would still be angry about the “East Coast Media Conspiracy.” The beloved author of Angle of Repose and The Big […]
Communities
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Crown of horns
An encounter with an injured bull elk, and the meaning of fatherhood.
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
HCN board meeting – in cyberspace
To save money during these rocky economic times, the High Country News board of directors held its first-ever board meeting via telephone and the Internet on Jan. 30. Not surprisingly, the meeting focused on HCN’s financial condition and what the organization is doing to survive in today’s down market. Before the holidays, a dip in […]
Posted inWotr
Winter camping can be hazardous to your health
One hundred thirty-five years ago this spring, a six-week ordeal began for Alferd E. Packer. The starving and disoriented man stopped eating wild rose hips. Trapped in the deep snows of the San Juan Mountains of western Colorado, he began gnawing on the corpses of his deceased comrades. Thus began one of the West’s most […]
Posted inGoat
Fueling the fire in Mexico
I recently wrote about the drug-related violence in Mexico and along our southern border. That generated some nice discussion. Even in the short time since I wrote that, the violence seems to have intensified: Already, more than 300 people have been murdered in the Juarez area this year. Yes, THIS year — that’s less than […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
The call of the tame
Jack London was a sustainable farmer
Posted inWotr
Decriminalizing drugs could stop the violence on the border
It sure didn’t seem like the kind of place where bloodied drug smugglers stumble out of the scrub after shootouts. But it was. On a recent road trip to Mexico, my family and I stopped for the night at some friends’ house near Tubac, Ariz., between Tucson and the border. Our friends’ backyard stretches into […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The dangerous, dusty trail
Lest it be outdone in the attacking-animal category, Boulder, Colo., can report that a “bitter bovine” attacked a Boulder biker. NewWest.net said a cow “charged a woman” on a trail and knocked her down. Fortunately, she wasn’t injured. “The cow had left the scene by the time rangers arrived, but hikers coming down the trail […]
Posted inGoat
Happy birthday Wallace Stegner
Yesterday, Feb. 18th, would have been Wallace Stegner’s 100th birthday (he passed away in 1993). Stegner, arguably the most iconic of Western writers and conservationists, is best known for his books “The Spectator Bird” and “Angle of Repose”. His prose has inspired generations of Westerners, including the founders of HCN. His words are a key […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
A voice in the wilderness
For 20 years, Jim Stiles has published one of the most essential alternative newspapers in the West: The Canyon Country Zephyr, based in Moab, Utah (latest motto: “All the news that causes fits”). With sharp, see-all-sides reporting, the independent has taken on the excesses of extractive industry, the failings of the New West economy, and […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Shooting a double victory
Full-Court Quest: The Girls from Fort Shaw Indian School: Basketball Champions of the WorldLinda Peavy and Ursula Smith479 pages, hardcover: $29.95.University ofOklahoma Press, 2008. Sixteen years before women in the U.S. gained the right to vote and long before women’s public sporting events were considered decent, a team of American Indian girls from Montana traveled […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
A battle for the land — and soul — of the West
The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and RecoveryHoward G. Wilshire, Jane E. Nielson, andRichard W. Hazlett617 pages, hardcover: $35.Oxford University Press, 2008. It’s no secret that the West’s public lands are in deep trouble. The American West at Risk presents a familiar litany of problems: damage from overgrazing, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Behold, a pale horse…
There may be nothing new, perhaps, about a drunk guy on horseback in Wyoming, but Benjamin Daniels, 28, created a traffic hazard at 4 p.m. in Cody just by “riding a white horse during a snowstorm.” Slow-moving horse and snowflakes were blending in, reports the Associated Press, and motorists told police they feared there would […]
Posted inArticles
Abraham Lincoln and the West
Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln: Few presidents have been so connected and so often compared. Obama served in the Illinois legislature, just as Lincoln did. Obama announced his candidacy from the steps of the old state Capitol in Springfield, Ill., where Lincoln delivered his famous “house divided” speech. Like Lincoln, he rode a train to […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
No backup on the Northern border
A rural county is saddled with international responsibility.
Posted inWotr
Fear and rage in the barn
I was in the middle of a divorce when I applied for the barn job. I walked into the local rodeo arena, introduced myself to the owner and was attacked by a rooster — claws up. My automatic response was to kick the bird across the barn, too late remembering this was a job interview […]
Posted inGoat
Move over Yucca Mountain…
Construction is underway on a hush-hush repository deep beneath Wyoming’s Sweetwater County. What will it hold? Well, it’s not nuclear waste or a germ warfare facility. I’ll give you a hint: It involves a somewhat notorious science fiction author and, tangentially, Tom Cruise. From the Casper Star-Tribune (via the AP): Public planners . . .say […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Culture and family
Besides being a way to ensure that only Indians got the pitiful and paltry benefits that the federal government was giving to the Natives they made treaties with, blood quantum was an insidious way of permanently removing the land and memory of a people (HCN, 1/19/09). What has happened to many Native families is a […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
“Five-fingered humans”
I’m a white boy who grew up on the Blackfeet rez in north-central Montana. I have distant Cherokee cousins, but my blood quantum is less than 1/16th, so I never thought it worthwhile to seek out the potential benefits, if tribal membership of an ancestor could have been proven (HCN, 1/19/09). I consider myself a […]
Posted inWotr
The terror and beauty of away games
The mud-spattered school bus hits snow at about 7,000-feet elevation. I’m following in a front-wheel-drive mini-van, and my tires are starting to spin in the gathering slush. Any moment, I expect the bus driver to find a wide spot in the road and retreat back to the high school, elevation 5,300 feet, where it is […]