It irks me no end. California, and more specifically, San Francisco, is once again ahead of the cultural curve. The state that brought us hippies, gay marriage and the “governator” is proposing a revolutionary, albeit pragmatic and simple, answer to the paper vs. plastic-bag quandary at check-out counters. “Paper or plastic?” It’s the fundamental question […]
Communities
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
City slaps back at property-rights measure
Residents of Bend, Ore., might want to think twice about where they put that new pig farm or high-rise condo. A provision in a recently approved ordinance in the central Oregon city of 62,900 allows people to sue their neighbors if nearby development reduces property values. Adopted on Dec. 1, the new rule is a […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Crimes against workers
Environmental crimes are among the hardest to prosecute. That’s the message authors Joseph Hilldorfer and Robert Dugoni dramatically deliver in The Cyanide Canary, the true story of chemical contamination in southeastern Idaho. In the summer of 1996, 20-year-old Scott Dominguez, an employee at Evergreen Resources — a company that produced fertilizer from mining waste — […]
Posted inWotr
Growing up is hard to do
While teaching a class in Gardiner, Mont., I asked the teenagers for adjectives to describe their lives. “Boring,” one called out, because I sensed the kid knew that teenagers were supposed to be jaded. It was a cloak he could easily don, and by pretending to be bored he wouldn’t have to work very hard. […]
Posted inWotr
Give a child the gift of a strenuous life
It was late fall, and my 8-year-old daughter and I stood at the bottom of a brushy, 300-foot cliff and talus slope overlooking Blue Lake in southern Oregon’s Sky Lakes Wilderness. For me, it was a short climb. For a little girl much smaller than me, the hill looked downright colossal. But I knew something […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
An artist’s residency, unplugged
The Aspen Guard Station is a log cabin in an aspen grove in the San Juan National Forest, 12 miles north of Mancos in southern Colorado. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the guard station once housed fire crews. Today, the cabin is home to another kind of seasonal worker: writers and […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Heard around the West
NEVADA AND THE WEST Some call it pork, the 11,000 or so local projects stuffed into the $388 billion spending bill just passed by Congress. Others, such as the Democrats’ new minority leader, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, call it money well spent and brag about it. Thanks to Reid’s clout, Nevada was awarded nearly $200 […]
Posted inWotr
How to write a Christmas card — or not
There has to be something in between the kind of Christmas card that is merely signed “Happy Holidays, Carol and Frank and The Whole Funk Family,” and the five-page Christmas monograph from Jane and Bob, who express so many detailed success and so much pride in their family accomplishments that you want to stab yourself […]
Posted inWotr
Bewitched and bewildered near Moab, Utah
If there’s a doubt in anyone’s mind about the rapidly changing rural West, look no further than the latest controversy to grip Moab, Utah. It doesn’t get much stranger than this. A few months ago, Robbie Levin, owner of Sorrel River Ranch, a luxury lodge north of Moab, applied for a cabaret license from the […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
A problem any city would love to have
Boulderites have poured money into protecting open space — now they want to use it
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Together, we cross the fence
“My credo has always been: Don’t take yourself too seriously, and never give up.” –Tom Bell, founder of High Country News, speaking to the National Wildlife Federation, March 9, 2002 Barbed wire in the mind, I’ll call it that; a four-strand fence, let’s say, barbs sharp against chest, gut and legs, little reinforcers, reminders that […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Heard around the West
OREGON “It’s perfect rattlesnake country,” exulted Deputy Sheriff Dan Brewer from Sweet Home, Ore., as he walked through sagebrush in eastern Oregon at the start of a vacation. He found what he was looking for underneath a boulder, and as his family videotaped the encounter, Brewer uttered the fateful words: “I say, let’s take a […]
Posted inWotr
What do you do in that little town?
Near the top of the list of dumb questions I get asked is this: “So, what do you do there?” This generally follows my telling anyone who has never been to Logan, Utah, that I live in Logan, Utah. In general, though, it is a question asked by those who mistakenly believe they live somewhere […]
Posted inWotr
An artist’s residency, unplugged
The Aspen Guard Station is a log cabin in an aspen grove in the San Juan National Forest, 12 miles north of Mancos in southern Colorado. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the guard station once housed fire crews. Today, the cabin is home to another kind of seasonal worker: writers and […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
In Oregon, a lesson learned the hard way
Washington has apples. Colorado has football and hockey. Oregon? We have land-use laws. It’s what built our state’s reputation. Planning textbooks often feature a chapter on Oregon, and environmentalists and land-use planners throughout the West look longingly toward our state Legislature in Salem; it’s the place where smart people put a cap on sprawl. That […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
Heard around the West
WYOMING A man working in a brushy area of his horse pasture in Big Horn, Wyo., looked over his shoulder and suddenly noticed he’d been stalked: A mountain lion stood 10 feet away. The man, who told the Cody Enterprise he wished to remain anonymous, did everything right: He straightened up, yelled and banged his […]
Posted inWotr
Terrible choices now confront the people of Oregon
On Nov. 2, when Oregonians closed the book on the most forward-looking planning law in the nation, they did not just amend a statute, they changed the ethos of a state that had for 30 years celebrated open spaces, greenways and livable communities over development. And they likely started a copycat war throughout the West […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
An unfinished life in Wyoming
A new novel from Wyoming’s own Mark Spragg relies less on the distinctive landscape of the West and instead explores the more universal territory of a fractured family. Still, most of An Unfinished Life unfolds on a Wyoming ranch near fictional Ishawooa, “elevation 5,313, population 1,783.” Seventy-year-old Einar Gilkyson lives a lonely life on a […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
The Sierra gets ‘a pocket’ for conservation funding
An idea born on the coast moves inland— but can it work in other states?
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
A new breed of ‘ski bums’ is anything but
Young people have to get creative if they’re going to survive in mountain towns