COLORADO Headline writers are having a field day in western Colorado with the upbeat story of a “plucky chicken” saved from drowning in a tub, thanks to a man employing “mouth to beak” resuscitation, reports The Associated Press. Chicken-owner Uegene Safken says he first yelled at the lifeless-looking bird: “You’re too young to die!” and […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
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 […]
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The devil made us do it
A recent proposal to change the name of Devils Tower National Monument has fallen through, but even if it had succeeded, Old Nick would have kept a prominent place in the landscape of the West. In Wyoming, monument supervisor Lisa Eckert had suggested adding the name “Bear Lodge” to the site. That came at the […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Down — but far from out — in Drummond
In the early 1950s, the town of Drummond, Mont., boasted busy bus and railroad stations, 11 bars, three grocery stores and 14 gas stations. Now, you can count what’s left on one hand. The ranching families that persist are resilient and dogged, and this book of large-format black-and-white photographs with accompanying interviews grows on you: […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
The River Has Never Divided Us: A Border History of La Junta de los Rios
The River Has Never Divided Us: A Border History of La Junta de los Rios Jefferson Morgenthaler 368 pages, softcover $22.95. University of Texas Press, 2004. The Rio Grande and Rio Conchos meet to form La Junta de los Rios, a basin along the U.S.-Mexico border where the cast of characters includes farmers, shepherds, Border […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
The Mountains Know Arizona
The Mountains Know Arizona Text by Rose Houk, photographs by Michael Collier 272 pages, hardcover $49.95. Arizona Highways Books, 2003. If you can tear yourself away from the spectacular photos — including some mind-numbing aerial shots (see page 14) — to read the accompanying words, you will be rewarded. In this chunky coffee-table book, Houk […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
The devil made us do it
A recent proposal to change the name of Devils Tower National Monument has fallen through. But even if it had succeeded, Old Nick would have kept a prominent place in the landscape of the West. Monument Supervisor Lisa Eckert had suggested adding the name “Bear Lodge” to the site. That came at the request of […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Heard around the West
WYOMING Cheyenne Frontier Days can get rowdy, but rowdy doesn’t begin to describe what rodeo contestant Neal Daniel did in a bar last July: He got into a fight he still can’t remember and stabbed a rival seven times. But after a judge recently ordered Daniel to pay the victim $32,000 in restitution, Daniel, a […]
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Montana’s Marlboro men get ready to bite the dust
I’m a sucker for the cowboy. My bookshelves sag under the weight of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry novels. I have spent summer wages on Ian Tyson CDs and Willie Nelson concert tickets. My favorite Clint Eastwood film is Unforgiven, not Million Dollar Baby. But even I was surprised when the 2005 Montana Legislature drew […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
The artist, her caretaker, and eight years of letters
The initial draw of Maria Chabot — Georgia O’Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941-1949 is its promise of a peek into the artist’s personal life. But the surprise of these collected letters between two women in the 1940s — one of them in northern New Mexico, cleaning out acequias, planting fruit trees and commenting on the “bloodsucker” artists […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources
The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources Matthew McKinney and William Harmon 297 pages, softcover $30, hardcover $60. Island Press, 2004 Authors McKinney and Harmon look at the West’s endless tug-of-wars over water, land use, fire management and wildlife — issues, they say, best resolved through collaboration, negotiation, or consensus. That’s not easy, […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Skiing, or wheeling and dealing?
New resorts smell a lot like real estate bonanzas
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
A mountain of books becomes a library of the land
Names Jeff Lee and Ann Martin Vocations Bookseller and graphic artist Home Base Denver, Colorado Claim to Fame Founders of the Rocky Mountain Land Library She says “This is just Jeff’s kind of project. I go day to day, he has the big vision.” “To really know the West, to be at home here,” says […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA California’s Highway Patrol sees a lot of silly stuff, like the guy crouched down in an open trunk, gamely trying to hang on to lawn chairs, or the driver in the carpool lane pretending that a life-size doll of “SpongeBob SquarePants” was a passenger. Officer Rob Rusconi says he watched a driver struggle to […]
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What the West needs is an honest discussion
Life was much simpler when I viewed the battle to “save” the West through a black-and-white lens. As a young environmentalist, it was easier to condemn my adversaries’ beliefs without scrutinizing my own. And it was easier to attack my adversaries when I didn’t know them. I have agonized over this for years now. At […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town
Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town Andrew Leo Lovato, 160 pages, hardcover $24.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. As author Andrew Leo Lovato writes, Santa Fe is not only a “city of ancient traditions” but one of “invented traditions” — in other words, it’s a true tourist town. “It is […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life
Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life Theda Skocpol, 384 pages, softcover $24.95. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Harvard University professor Theda Skocpol wants to know where all the volunteers have gone. Americans today are less likely to join volunteer groups than at any other time in the past, and the ubiquitous […]
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If Pedro needed help, I would have given it
Last September, while on an early morning walk with my dogs, I spotted an orange knapsack on a steep west bank of the Santa Cruz River here in Rio Rico, Ariz. I also saw two baseball caps lying near the water’s edge. I waded across the foul-smelling river and opened the orange knapsack. Inside, I […]
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Bumper stickers are a serious thing
I have two bumper stickers on my truck, and one I’d like to add if I could find it. The sticker I’ve had the longest is also the best, making Gary Snyder’s poem, “Jackrabbit eyes all night, breakfast in Elko,” seem wordy. Some of you will recognize it: SILT HAPPENS. It was, for years, the […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The last happy agency biologist — and other April Foolery
Public servant decides it’s time to put his feet up and relax