When Fury finally dies, he picks a back pasture on my parents’ Colorado ranch to rest his old horse body. The neighbor across the fence calls to tell my mother this, that he can see a dead horse from his kitchen window. This neighbor is not well liked. He is new. His house is new. […]
Communities
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
The Healing River
I live on a remote tributary of the Gila River in a still-wild corner of Catron County, New Mexico. Well, not “on” the river, really; no one really lives on a river, unless they’re on a houseboat on the constipated Colorado, or a converted shrimper on Orbison’s bayou. More specifically, I live far enough from […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Heard Around the West
UTAH How did that quote by Benjamin Franklin begin: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost ….” Didn’t it end with the loss of a kingdom? Well, a similar phenomenon may be occurring in the mining industry, which is going great guns, except for one problem: There aren’t enough 12-foot-tall tires around for […]
Posted inWotr
Skeletons lurk in the closets of our respected institutions
Last spring, the now-infamous Ward Churchill, University of Colorado professor of ethnic studies, gave a talk at Colorado College about the contents of our institutional closets. He claimed that we had the bones of 139 people — all Native Americans — hidden on campus. Churchill used this number to demonstrate the college’s complicity in the […]
Posted inWotr
What’s in a name? Ask an Anacondan
I lucked out when I landed in Anaconda, Mont. I didn’t have to tell my friends I was a Helen or a Malted. I became an Anacondan. Newspaper folks like to find shortcuts when writing news stories, and one of the best ones around is the ability to describe the people in a town with […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
In a run-down neighborhood, there’s lots of love
A Denver activist fights for her community
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
William Henry Jackson’s ‘The Pioneer Photographer’
William Henry Jackson’s ‘The Pioneer Photographer’ Bob Blair, 248 pages, clothbound: $39.95. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005. William Henry Jackson was the official photographer for Ferdinand V. Hayden’s survey of the Western territory from 1870-1878. Now, Bob Blair has compiled photos, map sketches, paintings and notes into a fun coffee-table book. Chapters range from […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Desire
Desire Lindsay Ahl, 231 pages, paperback: $14. Coffeehouse Press, 2004. If you’ve ever crept around the alley south of Albuquerque’s Central Avenue, you’ll be immediately drawn into this new novel by Santa Fe writer Lindsay Ahl. And even if you’ve never been to the Duke City, there’s good writing and fun action to draw you […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Soaring home prices spur changes to environmental law
California’s main environmental protection law is slated for reform in the name of affordable housing. With the median home price in California now over $500,000, developers and real estate agents say the best remedy is to build more homes fast. But the California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1970 as a more stringent supplement to […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
So far, Oregon land-use measure is more bark than bite
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “How dense can we be?“ Thanks to a set of strict, generation-old land-use laws, Oregon has escaped much of the scattered “exurban” development common in other Western states. But sprawl fighters feared the worst last November, when voters passed a ballot measure that could […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
I say: Good riddance to bad billboards
For four years in the 1980s, I lived in Vermont, and then left it for the West after tiring of the state’s busybody politics. But I certainly admired one aspect of life in the bucolic yet politically correct Green Mountain State: No billboards. Back in 1968, the Vermont Legislature passed a law banning billboards. Since […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Heard around the West
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” […]
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 […]