We’re winding our way up the Poudre Canyon in my old four-wheel drive – a strange group, to be sure. There’s me at the wheel, hoping this morning will go right. There’s my 14-year-old son, silent in the backseat, watching the canyon flash by. There’s dark-eyed Eva. And there’s the dead woman, Mary. Mary wanted […]
Communities
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Twenty views of the West
Best Stories of the American West is a collection of Western stories in which gunfights are outnumbered by basketballs, and the cowboy hats end up mangled beyond recognition. In other words, it’s not about the West as exemplified by John Wayne; it’s about a place in which people actually live. In compiling this first volume, […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
The new land rush
In the West’s mountains, old mining claims are the latest real estate hotspots
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Are tomorrow’s ghost towns sprouting today?
IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE that in the late 1880s, Bannock, Mont., was one of the fastest-growing, most wildly energetic communities in the West. The mining town was even proposed as the territorial capital. Today, it is a ramshackle collection of abandoned buildings surrounded by mine tailings and open only as a quiet tourist attraction. It […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Gunning with the in-laws
Jim Aldrich, my father-in-law, grins a lot. But today, as we stand on his deck in the desert of Southern California, his smile is especially pronounced, cutting deep creases into his stubbled cheeks. It’s not the blue sky brushed with contrails that makes him happy. It’s the gun. He just popped six rounds from a […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?
Heard Around the West
NEW MEXICO Just two decades ago, pink coyotes were ubiquitous in downtown Santa Fe. They howled at oil-painted moons, or were sculpted from metal, or were accompanied by acrylic neon landscapes. To some high-minded folks, the fad was much worse than a particularly bad moment in Southwestern-style kitsch; it seemed to signal the imminent demise […]
Posted inWotr
Just put an asterisk on the whole region
I wrote this column in 2 minutes and 17 seconds. I typed more than 300 words per minute, including the time spent getting the ideas out of thin air and editing myself, running the spell-check, and the ultimate writer’s reward, patting myself on the back. It’s a new world record for column writing. How can […]
Posted inWotr
Tomorrow’s ghost towns are sprouting today
It’s hard to believe that in the late 1880s, Bannock, Mont., not far from present-day Dillon, was one of the fastest-growing, most wildly energetic communities in the West. The mining town was even proposed as the territorial capital. Today, it is a ramshackle collection of abandoned buildings surrounded by mine tailings, and open only as […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Sculpting a reason to love the wind
NAME Gary Bates AGE 61 HOMETOWN Amsterdam, Montana OCCUPATION Sculptor, former farmboy KNOWN FOR Creating huge kinetic sculptures SAYS “I don’t know if these pieces are going to work. I hope they are. But you never know for sure.” WHAT THE HECK DOES “KETCHERSCHMITT” MEAN, ANYWAY? It’s a made-up word combining “catcher’s mitt” and “Messerschmitt” […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2007: Bonfire of the Superweeds
Heard Around the West
ARIZONA Paradise Valley, a posh town of 14,500 people in the Phoenix area, boasts houses that cost more than $20 million, and it’s nothing if not persnickety about urban necessities such as cell-phone towers. The town’s planning commission recently ruled that the first tower to be erected must wear a disguise as a palm tree […]
Posted inWotr
Hot time in the city
Summer features its best impression of Hades as we enter August. You feel like you’re awakening from a bad, slow-moving dream, one in which the cat has settled on your face, and you can’t wake up enough to move it, but neither can you breathe. That’s the way midsummer makes me feel. Denver’s weather is […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
Guns R Us
Is it time to re-examine the West’s extraordinary fascination with firearms?
Posted inWotr
They don’t have to shoot horses
The idea that you can keep a blind horse safely, that it can be pastured, ridden, that it can lead a happy, even productive life, flies in the face of conventional thinking. Conventional thinking, however, is not Alayne Marker’s strong point. She and her husband, Steve Smith, operate Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary in Montana, […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
On the road, and on a date with history
The road trip is a classic American narrative of escape: Huck Finn lighting out for the territory, Jack Kerouac chasing his dreams down the blacktop. In Uncertain Pilgrims, Lenore Carroll gives us a different kind of journey, narrated by Carla Brancato, a young woman from Kansas City who is struggling to get over the death […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
Heard around the West
NEW MEXICO Once arranged in a ring just like England’s ancient Stonehenge, 100 refrigerators are no longer standing in Santa Fe. Strong winds toppled much of the 80-foot-high, graffiti-covered structure, reports the Associated Press, and the rest was dismantled on May 30. “Fridgehenge,” or “Stonefridge,” as it was dubbed, morphed into a cult phenomenon that […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
An alphabetical speed-load of state-by-state gun facts
(Note: This article is a sidebar to the feature Guns R Us) ARIZONA Generally, by state law, you’re not allowed to carry a gun into a nuclear plant or hydroelectric dam area, or into a polling place on Election Day, or into any other “public establishment” where the host specifically bans guns, or into any […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
Video Interview: Ryan Horsley
Note: the videos linked below accompany the feature story of this issue, “Guns R Us.” Ryan Horsley on the history of Red’s Trading Post: The Growth of Red’s Trading Post Ryan Horsley on the growth of Red’s Trading Post, and why it doesn’t sell machine guns. Ryan Horsley on dealing with the ATF The Bureau […]
Posted inWotr
Oh, those summer nights at the drive-in!
It’s the kind of summer night when a warm breeze rubs up against you like your date in that strapless dress on prom night so long ago. Not only that, but our kids are restless and we need something to do. It’s the perfect night, in other words, to see a movie at the drive-in. […]
Posted inWotr
Wyoming manners? Forget about it!
Wyoming may be the rudest state in America. I grew up in upstate New York, where it was rude not to introduce strangers to each other. If you neglected to do this, you found yourself apologizing to the accidentally slighted person. Nothing in the preceding paragraph applies to daily life in Wyoming. Even New York […]
Posted inWotr
Asthma and allergies take root in the new West
‘Mom, would you really have shipped me off to Denver?’ I asked my mother recently. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘But imagine,’ I said, ‘what it would have been like for a 5-year-old living in an institution, surrounded by doctors and a bunch of asthmatic kids?’ ‘You were very, very sick,’ she explained.’Nothing helped.’ She told how […]