I started with hard red wheat. Our pioneer ancestors mostly ate bread made of cornmeal until the wheat began to thrive in the arid climate and thin soil. Hand grinders like mine pulverized it fine enough for bread, even cakes. Kneading, I could see my grandmother’s strong arms working the dough on the cupboard by […]
Communities
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
Reasons to stay
“Wyoming,” Charlotte Bacon writes, “made you feel that an articulated reason to stay was a good thing to develop.” In Bacon’s new novel, Split Estate, that nebulous feeling drives Arthur King to leave New York City with his two teenagers, Cam and Celia, after his wife, Laura, commits suicide. He rashly moves the family west […]
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
Heard Around the West
WYOMING Spring really is around the corner, says longtime “Far Afield” columnist Bert Raynes in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. With keen eyes, he’s observed some of the season’s earliest manifestations: “Coyotes in pairs and in groups … Ravens in mock pursuits. Bald eagles carrying nest materials, horned and great gray owls calling, dippers in noisy, […]
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
Two weeks in the West
Remember when that little shack down the road (every Western town has them – real rustic “fixer-uppers” oozing “charm,” “character” and mouse feces) sold for a few hundred grand? Well, today even spanking-new McMansions in some Western burgs won’t fetch that kind of money, thanks to an increasingly uncertain housing market and banks’ stiffer lending […]
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
Conservation easement conundrums
Colorado and other Western states crack down on abusers
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
Native Intelligence
Lili Singer turns Californians on to backyard bounty
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
My Crazy Brother
A personal look at the West’s suicidal tendencies
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
A message to our grandchildren
‘The lifetime crusade of your days must be to develop a new energy ethic to sustain life on earth.’
Posted inArticles
Surviving a friend’s suicide
‘I know something about black holes now—because there was one inside of him.’
Posted inWotr
Easter and the urban farmer
If she’d lived, this Easter would have been the fourth birthday of my eldest hen, Annabelle. She was the last of a tribe all named Annabelle, all of whom arrived as day-old chicks on Easter Sunday 2004. In the intervening years, various Annabelles fell prey to dogs, skunks and finally, last week, raccoons. Such is […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
Finding beauty in devastation
Chris Peterson might be the best wildlife photographer you’ve never heard of. With quiet effort over many years of working for the Hungry Horse News, a weekly based in Columbia Falls, Mont., Peterson has honed his craft – stalking birds, bears, gravity-defying mountain goats and the other denizens of Glacier National Park. He captures them […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
Heard Around the West
UTAH Even after he was caught making an outrageously racist remark, Republican state Sen. Chris Buttars refused to resign. Buttars had criticized a revenue-sharing bill for school districts, saying, “This baby is black, I’ll tell you. This is a dark and ugly thing.” Buttars said he was sorry, but he apologized only after the Senate […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Two weeks in the West
Spend an hour bare-skinned in the relentless sun and howling winds common along the Rocky Mountain states’ front ranges, and you’ll get a visceral (and likely angry red) understanding of the elements fueling yet another energy boom in the West. Wind and solar development is ramping up across the region, according to two recent industry […]
Posted inWotr
The scandal in Boulder that won’t go away
The scandal that people are still talking about in Boulder, Colo., isn’t the murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey; it’s about a rich couple “stealing” land from their neighbors — and getting away with it in court. The latest tidbit involving Dick McLean, a former Boulder Mayor and district court judge, and his wife, […]
Posted inWotr
Where’s the remote
You may have heard the news: Fewer Americans are venturing into anything that resembles the outdoors. According to a Nature Conservancy study, the number of visitors to state and national parks is declining, and fewer people are hunting, fishing or going camping. Why are people trading in their hiking boots for slippers? The study’s authors, […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
Two weeks in the West
Las Vegas’ overall ambience, not to mention those jug-sized cocktails, tends to breed a certain lasciviousness among its human inhabitants and visitors. Turns out that the same lust is infecting the mollusks of southern Nevada. Quagga mussels invaded the East and Midwest before hitching their way westward on promiscuous boats, and they were discovered in […]
Posted inWotr
Use it up, recycle, and never buy anything new – whew!
We may be running out of landfill space in the West, but not because of me. I’m a packrat. I spent summers in eastern Montana with my grandparents, who lived in an apartment above a department store. I spent the warm days rummaging through trash bins in the alley behind the store, and then I’d […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
Men, machines, memories
The major characters in Five Skies are men at work and men on the run. It’s not surprising that they are men of few words as well. Art Key, a 40-something Hollywood stunt engineer fleeing a guilty conscience, and Ronnie Panelli, a 19-year-old petty thief dodging the law, join aging ranch hand Darwin Gallegos for […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
Heard Around the West
MONTANA Karen Craver might have one of the toughest jobs in the West. For three years, she’s been a rural mail carrier in sparsely populated northern Montana, close to Canada. “Some places up here,” she says, “it’s 10 miles between mailboxes.” Every Tuesday and Thursday, Craver hits the rocky road that takes her north of […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
The People of the Sea
California’s Salton Sea could dry up and die, or be fixed and developed. Either way, its renegades, recluses, ruffians and retirees will lose.