At first glance, Home Ground resembles a straightforward encyclopedia of geography. But crack the book open, and you find yourself in unexpected territory, a geography of the imagination that blends literature, science, folklore and history. Author and editor Barry Lopez got the idea for the book after a frustrating attempt to find a definition for […]
Communities
Posted inMarch 5, 2007: Wish You Weren’t Here
Heard around the West
THE NATION Pity Gail Kimbell, the first woman appointed chief of the U.S. Forest Service. On Feb. 5 — her first day of work — President Bush proposed cutting her budget by 2 percent and eliminating more than 2,100 Forest Service jobs. A week later, Kimbell’s job got even more uncomfortable when she had to […]
Posted inWotr
Death of a New Westerner
Late on a Friday night last October, word came to me that my best friend, Bill Benge, had died suddenly of a massive heart attack in Moab, Utah. He was only 60. We had both come from large cities to Moab as young men, more than 30 years ago, and had chosen, for our own […]
Posted inWotr
Snowbound
“The sun that brief December day rose cheerless over hill of gray…” I’ll never forget the grim smile on my father’s wind-burned face as he pulled back my bedroom curtains. Snow was falling so heavily outside that I couldn’t see the pump house 20 feet away. “Snow tracing down the thickening sky its mute and […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Sans petrol
Grassroots efforts quietly lay the groundwork for a post-oil world
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
A quest for the world’s finest pinot noir
This is no stodgy dissertation on wine and how it’s made. With the very first sentence of The Grail, Brian Doyle uncorks a full-bodied work of enthusiastic storytelling. The Grail delivers on the promise of its subtitle: A Year Ambling and Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
The Land of the Dry
Like many of us who have lived in the West for a long time, I think it’s the best place to be. We have more open space, grander vistas, cleaner air, purer water, more wildlife, and less traffic than those who live at lower elevations. The country itself — all that public land close to […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 2007: One nation, under fire
Heard around the West
THE NATION Molly Ivins, that passionate defender of the underdog, died recently from breast cancer at age 62, leaving behind hilarious books skewering the Texas Legislature and a Texas homeboy named George W. Bush. The word “scrappy” doesn’t begin to describe her style. John Nichols, in a tribute to Ivins in the Nation, called her […]
Posted inWotr
Enough winter already
While reading recently about Kit Carson’s role in the settling of the West, I was struck by how mountain men more than 150 years ago dealt with the elements, particularly winter weather. Amazingly, they rode horses huge distances over unknown terrain without wearing Gore-Tex, Thinsulate or other advanced “technical clothing.” They mostly ate bacon, beans […]
Posted inWotr
What does a $155 million house reveal about us?
People have been talking about a plan to build the most expensive spec house in history in the exclusive Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Mont. The ski resort-home will boast 53,000 square feet of living space, larger than the new public library in Bozeman. It will have a heated driveway, an enclosed chairlift for direct […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
Heard around the West
WASHINGTON At the edge of his Soap Lake, Wash., backyard, Rick Froebe has lined up seven toilets and some old bathtubs and water heaters — all to annoy the golfers whose proximity makes his four dogs bark, which, in turn, annoys his neighbors. Froebe has even placed “three scarecrow-like dummies” on the toilets to look […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
A Western historian and a Western hero
Hal Rothman is dying. You can hear it in his voice — what’s left of it. The historian of the New West, defender of Las Vegas as the poster child for what the region will become as it continues to boom, fights a losing battle. Every day, says Lauralee Rothman, there’s something else her husband […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
Notes from a place of risk and hope
Writer Kevin Holdsworth copped Wyoming’s tourist slogan “Big Wonderful” to describe a place of both risk and hope, a beautiful, battered landscape rich in myth and fact. He presents it through the complementary perspectives of a mountain climber, family man and friend, describing both Utah, the state of his birth, and Wyoming, the home of […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 2007: The Efficiency Paradox
A tale of shame and glory in the Southwest
Hampton Sides’ latest book, Blood and Thunder, is an expansive treatise on an expansive subject: Manifest Destiny and the opening of the desert Southwest. Sides uses Kit Carson — with his distinctive combination of chivalry, heroism, cruelty and unflinching complicity with inhumane policies — as a sort of thread to weave together the history of […]
Posted inWotr
The underbelly of prosperity in the resort West is illegal labor
The public affairs director for Park City, Utah, Myles Rademan, tells a story about tourists on a ski vacation asking him for directions to a Mexican restaurant. His answer: “They’re all Mexican restaurants. Go into the kitchen of any restaurant, whether it’s American, Italian or Chinese, and the people cooking the food are Mexicans.” I […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Under the radar
In the rural West, the homeless are rarely seen and often ignored
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Man Camp
Energy companies turn to portable dormitories during housing crunch
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
A family of criminals and killers
Danielle Marie Cox came from a loving family. She attended private school through the sixth grade, had a 3.8 grade point average in high school, and earned a scholarship to Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. But the impressionable Cox fell prey to the drama and drugs of a homeless Portland street “family” she met […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
How to be #1 in the world and still be a loser
On one level, Giles Slade’s new book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, can be read as the played-straight history of the demise of things like the paper shirt front, tailfins on cars, and the pinball machine. Slade ranges considerably wider than his title lets on, however, and raises fundamental questions about the […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA AND CONNECTICUT A Squaw Valley ski instructor with mechanical moxie and a $950 rope tow has created a backyard ski area. The Vail Daily says Ken Wittel’s rope tow is powered by a 5 horsepower gas engine that can pull skiers up Wittel’s 300-foot-high hill at 11 to 18 mph. If your backyard lacks […]