I?ll always remember the evening a candidate for local political office, an environmentally minded and intelligent citizen whom I liked and admired, passed me on the highway between Cortez, Colo., and Mancos. I was traveling somewhere between 60 and 65 mph, my usual cruising speed. He blew by me — passing over a double yellow […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Hold on: I’m on my cell
In the last year I’ve done something that deeply offends some of my small-town neighbors: I’ve acquired a cell phone. Back when I was among the land-lined gentry, I used to think a cell phone was a reflection of lifestyle. People with mobile lifestyles — you commute to work, step out to meetings, travel to […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not allow winter’s quiet to be shattered everywhere
As an outdoor educator, I receive questions about cross-country skiing every winter. Lately, one common question is: “Where do I go to get away from snowmobiles?” Unfortunately, the fact is that there are fewer and fewer places on the West’s national forests where we can enjoy the natural peace and quiet of winter. We are […]
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A field guide to the instant rural guy
Anyone who has moved to the mountains recently has learned of the existence of a distinct subspecies of human beings known familiarly as “flatlanders.” The first thing that needs to be understood about this group is that it is almost never found at sea level. Only when the flatlander takes residence at a higher altitude […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Shear Pleasure
As the eighth red-headed slut slid down my throat, I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I was merely trying to keep up with my new friends, a group of traveling sheepshearers from New Zealand. But they kept buying round after round at the Sawmill Saloon in Darby, Mont. “Shearing’s a hobby,” […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
A corps of visitors, not discoverers
In Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes, the late historian and journalist Alvin Josephy assembles nine weakly linked essays by 10 Indian writers. A few essays are solid; some are tough to get through. But together they should enable the Anglo reader to pass through the looking glass, as Alice did in Lewis Carroll’s classic, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Heard around the West
CANADA AND IDAHO Spurred by global warming or just plain wanderlust, a female polar bear and a male grizzly got together six years ago for what Borat would call “sexy-time.” What the encounter produced might be dubbed a “pizzly” or a “grolarbear.” The male hybrid was shot earlier this year on a remote Arctic island […]
Posted inWotr
The best job in the world
I had the best job in the world this December. I made 50 people laugh and then start to cry. Some looked at me as if I were crazy, while others hugged me tight. I was a “Mystery Shopper” in Montrose, population 13,000, in western Colorado, who “caught” people shopping in local stores and gave […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Have knives and hooks, will travel
Name The Mobile Matanza Hometown Taos, New Mexico Measurements 36 feet long by 13 feet, 6 inches tall Items on her wish list Gloves, hook-eye sharpener, meat band saw blades, meat grinder plates, three-way oilstone, platters, long butchering aprons, butchering supplies and knives, brushes and scrapers. She’s sleek, full-figured and gleaming white, though not […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Dancing to Biederbecke in Montana
In his first novel, Montana memoirist William Kittredge serves up a simmering potboiler, a deliberately old-fashioned stew rich with The-Summer-I-Became-a-Man mythology and a poor boy/rich girl romance. The mother of The Willow Field’s protagonist, Rossie Benasco, runs a sort of halfway house in Reno for divorcées: “By the time his voice changed, Rossie had seen […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
The art of an alien landscape
Westerners are always surprised to realize that critics often dismiss the region’s art and literature as an inferior, derivative part of the American canon. Luckily, we have Alan Williamson, a poet and scholar with roots on both sides of the country, to set the record straight. In Westernness: A Meditation, he examines what it means […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Dina’s Place
Dina takes me down to the river, to a place behind her house on the reservation. “I want to show you my secret spot,” she says. “C’mon.” The Big Sioux River smells like piss some days, or a wasting body. In my second summer working for the tribe, I have come to know the river’s […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Heard around the West
MONTANA The Washington Post couldn’t resist a colorful headline about the outcome of Montana’s tighter-than-tight race for the U.S. Senate: “A true blue libertarian: Stan Jones, the also-ran who changed the hue of politics.” Jones, 67, is certainly known for his ashen-blue face — the unfortunate result of drinking a homemade medicine that contained silver […]
Posted inWotr
Chickens are roosting on private property in Oregon
Oregon’s Ballot infamous Measure 37 created an old-fashioned land rush as property owners, developers and opportunists raced to file claims for compensation before the recent deadline. An estimated 3,600 claims were filed with the possibility that the last-minute rush added 1,000 more. The total cost of the claims may top $7 billion, though no one […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Crafting the everyday
Stridently male: That’s how journalist Joseph Kinsey Howard characterized Butte, once the world’s greatest producer of copper. Not only was hardrock mining physically demanding, it was the most dangerous industrial occupation in America. Small wonder that Butte developed a reputation for being a man’s town or that its official history has always been told from […]
Posted inWotr
Westerners sure love their mountain monikers
The first thing I noticed when I was plucked from a sound sleep by aliens and we started flying around was that all the Western towns and cities were conveniently labeled. Lifting off from Logan, Utah, I could clearly see the big mountainside “L” get smaller as we zoomed skyward. Heading west, it only took […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Heard around the West
COLORADO As the Rocky Mountain News put it, “Naked frivolity heats up the night.” Their heads inside pumpkins and their clothes nowhere in sight, hundreds braved cold weather on Halloween to streak past the costumed pedestrians thronging Boulder’s outdoor mall. “With the pumpkin on the head, it’s anonymous,” said Jazzmin Jenkins, 21. “What could be […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
State of Jefferson: A place apart
Name Brian Petersen Age 40 Vocation Entrepreneur: Runs a local car wash, fabricates signs, grinds stumps, manufactures plastic trays for bed-bound laptop users, and silk-screens T-shirts for local soccer teams. He recently bought a $30,000 laser-engraver whose commercial potential, he says, is untapped; he’s still dreaming up ways to use it. Known for Promoting the […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Elementary, my dear cowpuncher
In his new historical mystery, Holmes on the Range, Steve Hockensmith slyly tips his hat to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose 1887 novella, A Study in Scarlet, introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Both books feature a Western theme. In Doyle’s melodramatic tale, a murder in London is linked to the history of Mormon Utah. […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA It may sound like a weird thing to have to face at work first thing in the morning, but inside California’s EPA building in Sacramento, squirming worms share space with employees. The live animals, housed in 60-some bins, are such a part of cubicle culture that staffers compete for the prize of “most productive” […]