It’s been four years since I touched human bone, since I had silt and clay stuck beneath my fingernails and inside the cracked skin of my knuckles — silt and clay that had cradled bones for hundreds of years. I used to work as a contract archaeologist, scanning the landscape for petroglyphs and fire rings, […]
Communities
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Love and loathing on the interstate highways
At a conference several years ago, we were given crayons and sheets of white paper and asked to draw our visions of utopia. This was in the West, so of course a great many rustic cabins in meadows far removed from civilization were sketched onto these sheets. Not mine. Yes, of course, I had hills […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Seeing the mysterious in the everyday
Someday, everything is gonna be different / When I paint my masterpiece. — Bob Dylan It’s late at night in the green springtime, and I’m wide awake in the studio, Van Morrison on the CD player and a pastel painting slowly coming to life on the easel before me. Hayfields and a line of cottonwoods, […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA If you protest acts of violence, does that make you a violent person? The answer is yes, according to the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center. The center warned Oakland police that an anti-war protest planned for the city’s port might turn violent, even though there was no evidence that demonstrators intended to do anything but […]
Posted inWotr
Why I do what I do, the way that I do it
I hate corpo-jargon, the trying-to-be hip phrases that aren’t. But the first words in my mind as I pull off Quartzite, Arizona’s main drag into the gritty parking lot of Reader’s Oasis are: “I am definitely working outside the box.” The big-box bookstores, that is. Reader’s Oasis is a metal shed, a half-dozen tables, a […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Road-builders pay for archaeological damage
Even in “wild and woolly” Catron County, N.M., you still have to pay if you’re caught damaging archaeological sites on public land. In 1999, a private landowner hired a construction company to clear a dirt road through a national forest to a patch of private land. In the process, the bulldozer plowed through three prehistoric […]
Posted inWotr
The bittersweet comings and goings in a small town
Most schools have a Homecoming weekend. Red Lodge, Mont., celebrates a different kind of coming home, on Memorial Day. On the last weekend in May, snowplows finish clearing the 10,000-foot Beartooth Pass between Red Lodge and Cooke City. And unless blizzards close it right back up again, which happens with some regularity, people like to […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
A native son of Oregon writes of heartbreak, determination
As its subtitle suggests, David James Duncan’s latest book of essays, My Story as Told by Water, has a little bit of everything: “confessions, Druidic rants, bird-watchings, visions, prayers.” At its core, the book is about how this native son of Oregon — author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K — […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Heard Around the West
NEVADA Las Vegas’ drought has gotten so serious that some golf courses are replacing grass with crushed rock. But course managers aren’t ripping out their turf without casting verbal stones at homeowners, who use 65 percent of the area’s water, spraying three-quarters of it outdoors, according to The Associated Press. Golf courses are just the […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Historic preservation vs. tourism?
Colorado’s ancient petroglyphs and pioneer-era courthouses might soon be left to the ravages of time. State Treasurer Mike Coffman wants to boost the state’s economy by redirecting funds earmarked for historic preservation to promote tourism. In 1990, Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment that legalized gambling in three towns — Black Hawk, Central City and […]
Posted inWotr
The West loses an unsentimental guide
Historian David Lavender was the best sort of guide a traveler in the West could have: A quiet man with a wry sense of humor, he was passionate about this region, refused to romanticize it and was happy to share his knowledge if asked. He was never sentimental about the West, writing about cowboys: “Although […]
Posted inWotr
Real ranches don’t have “ette” in their name
Listen up, folks, here’s a vocabulary lesson from a rancher and writer who’s tired of bad writing distorting Western history. A ranch is not just any patch of rural ground, and the saying, “All hat, no cattle,” is more than a joke. It’s true most ranchers prefer not to reveal the size of their places, […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Heard Around the West
A typist at the Herald Journal in Logan, Utah, misread a letter to the editor, and the result was a howler, particularly since the letter dealt with public misconceptions about wolves. The word “wolves” was transmogrified into “wives,” and somehow got through copyediting without a hitch. Here’s how the sentence appeared in the paper: “Wives […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Mary Colter discovered
Mary Colter, like other female artists of the Southwest, was inspired by the region’s vivid landscapes and indigenous cultures. But unlike Georgia O’Keeffe or Terry Tempest Williams, Colter remained largely unknown to the public and her peers during her lifetime. Following her death in 1958, she sank further into obscurity — until recently. Arnold Berke’s […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Hit the audio road in Nevada
“I wasn’t sure what I had found, but I knew it was Nevada,” says Jon Christensen, as he drives the so-called Extra-Terrestrial Highway in eastern Nevada. The road flanks Area 51, the top-secret military facility where scientists are rumored to be studying captured aliens. Originally a series on Nevada Public Radio, Nevada Variations is a […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Heard Around the West
Don’t mess with Monterey; it plays hardball. For the next 15 years, no cruise ship from Crystal Cruises will be allowed to enter the California city’s harbor. What’s more, if one city official had his way, the company would be banned “forever” – because one of the cruise line’s ships, the Crystal Harmony, dumped 36,000 […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
A desert’s stolen secrets
It caught my eye, like a ruby someone had dropped on the ground. I was already looking for something, a handhold maybe, a place to step as the two of us scrambled up this route of cliffs and ledges in the Utah desert. I squinted into the shadow of a leaning boulder and saw the […]
Posted inWotr
On the road, where everything falls away
There is nothing like being on a road trip, especially a Western road trip. On the road, anything is possible. The rest of life falls away into another dimension. If it isn’t a frontier of possibility, it’s at least a paved ribbon of it. On a trip years ago, I remember stopping in Truth or […]
Posted inWotr
He taught us to see — but not the whole picture
One of the most celebrated photographers in American history began his career by snapping the kind of family vacation pictures that betray no hint of visual genius. This should hearten any teenager whose early accomplishments with pen, camera, guitar or paintbrush seem inadequate to support dreams of artistic triumph. Ansel Adams was 14 when he […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Heard Around the West
Watch out, Satan, your number may be up. Route 666 in northwest New Mexico has been called the Devil’s Highway, Satan’s Highway and the highway to Hell — because 666 is “the number of the beast,” in the biblical book of Revelation. It’s also been called downright dangerous, reports the Albuquerque Journal: At least 15 […]