Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Even as light-rail lines promise to revolutionize transportation within the West’s metropolitan areas, longer commuter rails could connect these far-flung cities in ways they have not since railroad’s glory days a century ago. Unlike light rail, which uses overhead electrical lines, […]
Communities
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Reading, riding and relaxing
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Kevin Koernig believes light rail is making him healthy, wealthy and maybe even wise — or at least well read. Koernig lives in Littleton, a suburb along Denver’s southwest light-rail line, and commutes by train several days a week to his […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
A city center in the suburbs
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” On weekdays, Charlie Lybrand’s car doesn’t budge from its parking space. A student of economics at Denver’s Metropolitan State College, Lybrand lives in an apartment complex in the suburb of Englewood. Just out the door is a light-rail station. “I use […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Light rail moves inland from the ‘Left Coast’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” On any given Sunday afternoon in Salt Lake City, Utah, families in their shirt-and-tie finest queue up at light-rail stations near the Mormon temple. On a Saturday night, fans of the Utah Jazz, the city’s professional basketball team, disembark for a […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
The day they close the pass
Old-timers still remember when winters in mountain towns meant something more than just catering to hordes of skiers. Sure, those winters were tough; the days were short and cold, and drifting snow restricted outdoor activities and even closed some businesses and high mountain roads. But mountain winters had a positive side, too, for they were […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Heard around the West
UTAH Eighty may be the new 60, but ski resorts aren’t thrilled by the increasing number of ancient customers who refuse to hang up their skis. So Park City, like many other ski resorts, has abandoned its ski-free policy for those over 70. Septuagenarians must now pay $249 for season passes, reports the Park Record. […]
Posted inWotr
Land trusts have gotten the word to shape up
Over the past several years, conservation easements have come under increasing scrutiny. Critics have argued that these private agreements — designed to forever protect open space on private land from development — have resulted in widespread abuses, such as giving too much money in tax breaks or other advantages to the wealthy and powerful. These […]
Posted inWotr
Compassion can be dangerous to your health
It feels to me as if the Dalai Lama left a weapon of mass destruction in Idaho when he visited this September. I’m not a Buddhist, but I have admired the teachings and tolerance of the Dalai Lama for years. So I couldn’t miss the chance to visit the prayer wheel that he blessed at […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Odes to an urban mountain range
Like other mountain ranges that dominate city skylines, Albuquerque’s Sandia Mountains are too easily taken for granted. The Sandias’ diverse hiking trails range from the lung-busters that scale the west side’s granite face to lush trails on the east that meander through mixed conifers. But how many of the city’s half-million residents take advantage of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
A long walk into hope
This is a book by a tall skinny guy with a goofy warm smile who took “a long walk across America’s most hopeful landscape: Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York’s Adirondacks.” Along the way, he meets up with old friends, many of whom also seem to be tall skinny guys with goofy warm smiles, who […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
A move to make land trusts more accountable
Land Trust Alliance unveils accreditation program to weed out ‘bad actors’
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
For this English chef, home is the Colorado Plateau
On Sunday mornings, all summer long, you can find chef John Sharpe at the Flagstaff Community Market, moving among the outdoor produce stalls with the practiced intensity of a hardcore bargain hunter at an outlet mall. He tests the white peaches Rob Lautze has grown at Garland’s Orchard near Sedona: nice, but not enough of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Heard around the West
THE WEST If you like nothing better than a good pun, check out the “Endangered Feces” T-shirt that’s advertised on several Web sites for environmentally oriented companies. Twenty scats from wild animals are pictured on the front of the shirt, including the substantial contribution of a grizzly bear, the dainty deposits of a New Mexican […]
Posted inWotr
Why I Cherish the Road to Nowhere
When I was a kid, I hated roads that went to nowhere. Lonely and, to a first-grader’s eyes, completely featureless, the high desert of my childhood had plenty of them. Roads to nowhere meant frustratingly long rides in a station wagon without air-conditioning, whizzing along flat open spaces with tumbleweeds blowing across the highway, the […]
Posted inWotr
Is how we’re living gross?
I lapse into smugness when someone visits me early in the summer. The mountains around Bozeman, Mont., are dazzling white, the fields emerald, the rivers boisterous, the air clear. I first came here in the spring. I remember how staggering it was. It happened again recently. A friend who had never visited passed through and […]
Posted inWotr
The day they close the pass
Old-timers still remember when winters in mountain towns meant something more than just catering to hordes of skiers. Sure, those winters were tough; the days were short and cold, and drifting snow restricted outdoor activities and even closed some businesses and high mountain roads. But mountain winters had a positive side, too, for they were […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Inside the fall
Flat on my back under the cottonwood, yellow leaves falling, brilliant blue above, an abandoned rake beside me. My two young children sit at my side, feeding sticks to the dog, who likes to chew them up and understands that every time he gently takes a twig and crashes it in his teeth he is […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Heard around the West
IDAHO A border collie adept at “child-herding, intense stares and home protection” has applied for a job with the city of Boise: He wants to chase Canada geese off the playing fields. In a letter purported to be from the herd dog, named Atticus in honor of the lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird, he […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Out of the Four Corners
A young archaeologist searches for clues to what drove a mass exodus from southwestern Colorado more than 700 years ago
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
A smart-growth bulldog
Albuquerque city councilman goes head-to-head with the incumbent mayor, and the developers who have long ruled here