IDAHO Travis Steele, a 31-year-old college student, was a pizza-delivery man in Lewiston, Idaho, until someone’s complaint to his boss cost him his job. Steele’s offense? His bumper sticker read, “Darwin loves you,” a play on the slogan, “Jesus loves you.” In a letter to the Lewiston Tribune, Steele said he was given a “choice” […]
Communities
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
How dense can we be?
Living the good life in the ‘exurbs’ is draining our tax coffers and devouring the West’s open spaces, but large-lot development continues to explode
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The best of both worlds
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ George Abramajtis is a man of extremes. He grew up at sea level in the New York borough of Queens, and even after he got married, the view from his bedroom window was of a brick wall six feet […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
The end of exurbia: An interview with James Howard Kunstler
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ James Howard Kunstler has made a reputation for himself as a critic of America’s auto-dependent suburbs, first with his 1993 book, The Geography of Nowhere, and then his 1996 book, Home From Nowhere. Now, he is taking aim at […]
Posted inWotr
Real estate lingo for the New Westerner
I’m a rancher, so almost every day some realtor explains how much money I could make if I sold the ranch. Developers are subdividing pastures nearby, and soon, it’s true, I may not be able to afford ranching. So, I’m studying up on the new real estate lingo and — in typical friendly Western fashion […]
Posted inWotr
What it was like in prison in Riverton, Wyoming
My parents have been spending time in the slammer. They are both approaching 80, are upstanding citizens, but in any given month, they might average two weekends in the joint. A while back, I decided to join them. That particular weekend they were at the Honor Farm in Riverton, Wyo. They specialize in Wyoming institutions […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Write-off on the Range
Wielding conservation’s most powerful tool, Reid Rosenthal walks a fine line between helping the land and serving his wealthy clients.
Posted inWotr
Stars in our eyes
Recently, at mid-afternoon on a rainy day, I looked up at the cloud-burdened sky and missed the stars, truly missed them. I felt the kind of wistful pangs that you might when you remember a long-gone but beloved grandparent, or a teenage sweetheart who misunderstood you long ago. I knew they were up there — […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
A view of the West from on high
What does a newpaperman-turned-professor who spends the better part of 168 pages reminiscing about life in the spliff-puffing ski town of Crested Butte have to say that’s relevant to anywhere else in the West? Well, it turns out, a lot. If you ever wonder whether the West will create that mythic society to match its […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Little Things in a Big Country: An Artist and Her Dog on the Rocky Mountain Front
Little Things in a Big Country: An Artist and Her Dog on the Rocky Mountain Front Hannah Hinchman, 176 pages, hardcover: $25.95. W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. This hand-lettered, hand-illustrated book tells of Hinchman’s travels with her dog in western Montana. Her charming yet refreshingly unsentiminetal descriptions, sketches, and paintings illustrate the changing seasons, her […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Conservation Easement Statistics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Write-off on the Range.” 1.1 billion Total private acres in United States 2 million Number of acres of “development sprawl” consuming landscapes per year 800,000 Number of acres of land protected by local and regional land trusts per year, either in new conservation easements […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Congress looks to reform a system with no steering wheel
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Write-off on the Range.” When a congressional think tank proposed overhauling the tax rules surrounding conservation easements in January, it hit private-land conservationists like a thunderbolt. As part of its 435-page report on reforming many aspects of the federal tax system, the Joint Committee […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Colorado tax credits make easements work for working people
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Write-off on the Range.” Colorado farmers Dorothy and Norman Kehmeier have raised more than $500,000 in cash, simply by donating conservation easements on about 200 acres of their land. And they’d like other landowners to hear about it. “It’s wonderful,” Dorothy Kehmeier says. She’s […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Ego gates get my goat — and that’s just the beginning
So my neighbor finally got a ranchette. Whether it’s five acres or 40, the next step is apparently the perfect entrance gate. Rancheteers have made these huge gates the latest symbol of affluence in the West. They boast uprights bigger than my house, flanked by imported decorative boulders. The crossbar seems sometimes to be a […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Heard around the West
UTAH Some snowmobilers have been known to skim their machines over water, striving for distance. Not surprisingly, sinking happens, not to mention at least one drowning. But how about vrooming a snowmobile over dirt? How far could you get? A 35-year-old man found one answer recently, when he gunned his snowmobile down an unpaved parking […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
How to Examine Conservation Easements
How to learn more about conservation easements and land trusts in your area
Posted inWotr
On the basketball court, a confusion and profusion of races
Steve Nash was chosen as this year’s most valuable player in the National Basketball Association, and other than that he grew up in British Columbia and now plays for the Phoenix Suns, you might ask what this has to do with the West. A fair question, and one I will get to. Nash is a […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Finding good grub in Mormon redrock country
The small towns that border the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah have long steamed with political and cultural conflict. But on the northern edge of the monument, in the tiny town of Boulder, a determined peacemaking effort is under way. Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle, two young chefs from Flagstaff, Ariz., moved to […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
The Guymas Chronicles
The Guaymas Chronicles, David E. Stuart, 394 pages, hardcover $24.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Anyone familiar with Southwestern archaeology will recognize the name David Stuart. Only this time, he’s not authoring a ground-breaking study of the Anasazi; he’s writing a memoir of the time he spent in Mexico during the early 1970s. It’s […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music andStories of Undocumented Immigrants
Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants, Edited by Nicholas J. Cull and Davíd Carrasco, 192 pages, softcover with DVD $34.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. When the movie Alambrista first appeared in 1977, it took viewers by surprise. No moviemakers had ever shown what it was like to […]