The land was ours before we were the land’s …Something we were withholding made us weakUntil we found out that it was ourselvesWe were withholding from our land of living,And forthwith found salvation in surrender. – Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright” I know I’m starting to lose it. My sense of place. It really hit […]
Communities
Heard around the West
Is there no compassion in Aspen? Maybe not much for Kenneth Lay, former honcho of the bankrupt corporation Enron. The good drinkers at the Woody Creek Tavern recently placed a contribution bowl on the bar to raise money for Lay, a quasi-local and occasional neighbor. Lay owns several properties in Aspen as well as a […]
Development threatens historic town
Does Washington’s growth law do its job?
You can call mine Mortgage Manor
Lupine Lodge. Del Mar at the Sea. Massive Mountain Manor. Harbor House at the Pines. I have changed the names to protect the ostentatious; to protect those who not only must own four luxury homes in four different places, but also pick and register names for them. I didn’t think I was capable of being […]
Westerners share a different reality
Time magazine recently gave Westerners a good laugh. Time’s “Your Technology” columnist, Anita Hamilton, wrote about her road test of a new satellite radio network. You’ve probably heard of satellite radio – it’s the latest breakthrough, promising to beam signals from orbit to your car radio whether you’re in Stinking Desert, Ariz., or Sodden Pass, […]
Heard around the West
What does the well-dressed park ranger wear to work at Yellowstone National Park? A gas mask, of course, if the work station is at the park’s western gate. Especially on dead-calm winter days, a pall of pollution awaits staffers as they deal with up to 1,200 snowmobilers idling their gaseous engines. The Clinton administration tried […]
In the grip of Ungulate Fever
Deep crimson splotches, like large drips from a painter’s brush, pock the snow and lichen-encrusted rocks. A few steps farther, they mingle with patches of gray-brown fur, some of which cling to the stiff gray branches of sagebrush. Then more blood, more fur, more blood, on down the hill. And finally, the body. Or what’s […]
Scouts (dis)honor
ARIZONA After Henry Jackson bought the X9 ranch just a few miles southeast of land-hungry Tucson in 1955, he subdivided and lightly developed much of it. But during the ’70s and ’80s, Jackson also deeded 420 acres to the Boy Scouts of America. At the base of the Rincon Mountains, the land is bordered by […]
Entrepreneur shovels trouble
UTAH Archaeologists don’t dig Anasazi Digs. The family-owned business on private land near Monticello, Utah, invites customers to excavate – and keep – artifacts from an Anasazi pueblo for $2,500 a day. “It’s like owning a Van Gogh painting and cutting it into lots of pieces,” says Utah state archaeologist Kevin Jones. “The owner could […]
How does snow melt? A test for all Westerners
“You can’t be a sissy and live in this country,” the old rancher told me, his German accent evident despite his being native to this mountain valley. “Or at least you didn’t use to,” he added, looking me in the eye. It was the 1970s, and I was new to the Interior West. The rancher […]
Heard around the West
Once in a while, Utah makes us wonder. Guns, for instance, enjoy a privileged status that extends everywhere on Beehive State property except prisons, hospitals and courtrooms. That means you can wear a .40-caliber Glock pistol while teaching or taking notes in a college classroom, and nobody has the right to ask you to leave […]
Why the bad rap for Mormons?
If you live in the Intermountain West, you know at least a few of them. If you live in Utah, they’re everywhere. If you are also a nonmember, or “gentile,” as Mormons call the rest of us, you bear a special burden when you leave home. Once people hear I’m from Utah, they invariably ask, […]
Heard around the West
It’s good to be queen – the food is better – but then you get stale and lay fewer eggs, and pretty soon you’re out of a job. Buying new queens is what honeybee breeders face every year, reports Capital Press, and “requeening” has usually been no big deal. Queens can easily be shipped from […]
The Steens Riviera?
OREGON One year after Congress approved groundbreaking legislation to protect Steens Mountain in eastern Oregon, environmentalists worry that the essential parts of the plan are going nowhere (HCN, 11/6/00: Congress moves on local proposals). Although the Cooperative Management Act authorizes federal legislators to appropriate as much as $25 million from the Land and Water Conservation […]
Cat trouble dogs Flagstaff
ARIZONA Ever since the Arizona Game and Fish Department killed two mountain lions on the edge of Flagstaff last fall, residents have been grappling with the hard facts of life on the edge of the forest. Game and Fish contracted with the federal Wildlife Services agency to kill the two lions, one Sept. 16 and […]
Artists paint a Pacific Northwest history
A book this smart makes you wonder why the undertaking hasn’t been done before: telling the story of a region through the paintings it has inspired. No matter, because Sasquatch Books has just released The Pacific Northwest Landscape: A Painted History, an excellently assembled book edited by Northwest Bookfest founder Kitty Harmon. It presents canvases […]
A neighborhood for Aspen’s ‘middle’ class
Developer tries to revive his community
The American West is an island besieged
I saw the future of the American West. It stared at me with an unblinking black eye through a narrow metal window in the wall of an aviary on the island of Maui. “That’s the female,” said our guide, Mary Schwartz. “She’s the social one.” The facility manager for the Maui Bird Conservation Center opened […]
A sense of wonder needs no name
Once, I canoed around an Idaho river bend and surprised two enormous, white birds in the shallows. As they lifted off, showing black-tipped wings, I shaped my mouth around the unfamiliar words, “whooping cranes.” Another long-legged bird, farther downstream, joined the whoopers in flight. Yet when I told a knowledgeable birder that I’d seen three […]
Ridgetop home may be toppled
UTAH It was Bruce Daley’s dream to retire to Park City, Utah, and build his home on the most spectacular hilltop he could find. But his dream has turned into a nightmare. In the mid-1990s, the Tucson, Ariz., resident and former auto-body shop owner began the planning process for his ridgetop home in Park City. […]
