With only a bike to call his home, Mike Kahn is on a mission this summer. He wants to educate children about nature and the environment – while he pedals almost 4,000 miles from California to Maine. Kahn is the former office manager for Environmental Volunteers, a nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif., and […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Meth invasion
America’s drug of the moment wreaks havoc in the rural West.
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
‘There’s not much to do out there’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Erec Hopkins, 20 years old, is serving a year of work release for third-degree sexual assault. He works 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week at the Whitman County shop, where he assists in maintaining county vehicles. When he’s not on work […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
The makings of a meth lab
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mike LaScoula makes sure I correctly write down the following quote: “Not everyone associated with meth is a dirtbag,” says the Spokane County Health District’s chemical and physical hazards adviser, “but they are all dumb asses.” To prove his point, LaScoula takes me to […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Saving some of Utah
In early June, a coalition of environmental groups completed a three-year, $2.5 million fund-raising effort to protect a historic ranch tucked deep in northern Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. The privately owned ranch provides habitat for elk, mule deer, moose and sandhill cranes, and several historic trails traverse the ranch’s 7,300 acres. But the property is only […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Red Mountain tries to hang on to history
Locals want to put an abandoned mining district in public hands
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Heard around the West
Yes, they look freaky, some of them, but on the whole they’re peaceable and just want to see old friends and hang out – sometimes, it is true, while sampling controlled substances. They are the Rainbow Family of Living Light, a loosely affiliated group of ’60s-style hippies who gather for a week once a year […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Shakespeare in Montana
Montanans are proud of the state’s world-class trout streams, abundant elk herds and their ongoing love affair with Shakespeare. Hang around bars, billiard halls or restaurants across the state and you can easily strike up a conversation with the locals on which of the bard’s plays and characters rings true to their heart. Shakespeare was […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Painting the prairie
Crowded Prairie: Four Painters, an exhibition at the Ucross Foundation Art Gallery in Ucross, Wyo., features 34 paintings by Karen Kitchel, Chuck Forsman, John Hull and James Lancel McElhinney. “Each (painter) has something to say that is very serious about the environmental impact of our technology on the land,” says Gordon McConnell, curator of the […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
‘A natural calamity’
Through historical and eyewitness accounts, scientific analysis and amazing photos, Rob Carson’s Mount St. Helens: the Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano, takes us back to the blast of 20 years ago: “By the evening of May 18, Mount St. Helens was a smoking crater, hollowed-out and grey. It looked defiled, like the victim of […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Starry 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 feel when remembering a long-gone but beloved grandparent, or a teenage sweetheart who once misunderstood you. I knew they were up there — the […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Crater doesn’t come cheap
ARIZONA Conservationists are close to protecting a volcanic crater and wetland near Flagstaff, Ariz. All they have to do is raise $3 million. In March, the Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon Trust signed a land-swap deal with developers, in which the trust bought the 247-acre caldera known as Dry Lake. Developer Jim Mehen, who had first proposed […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Beauty and Solitude
There are approximately 80 places in the United States where artists of all kinds can go to compose, paint, write, sculpt and photograph. These artists’ communities, which are mostly on the coasts, accommodate about 4,000 visitors a year. If all goes well, there will soon be a new one just outside Zion National Park in […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Telluride’s MountainFilm
If the past is guide, the 22nd MountainFilm in Telluride this May will be more than the sum of its parts. The individual elements will be impressive – a day-long opening symposium on the Andes and miles of celluloid about nature, other cultures, and jocks playing on rocks, glaciers and rivers. But the power of […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
We can do it ourselves
It was 1970, and people were dropping out in droves. Wood stoves were replacing electric heat, milk cartons were transforming wax into candles. Someone noted that more pottery was created during the ’70s than during the history of mankind – perhaps an exaggeration. One of the gurus for back-to-the-landers 30 years ago was a woman […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Why I ride the bus
Only one other passenger waits to catch the 6:47 a.m. commuter bus from Pullman to Moscow, Idaho. She is pleasant looking, well dressed, with Walkman headphones snaking up out of her sweater. Because I ride this bus regularly, I’ve learned some details of this woman’s life. Whitney Houston is her favorite singer. The woman has […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Grass roots keeps town tiny
WASHINGTON Nestled in a narrow valley at the remote north end of Lake Chelan, Wash., there’s a tiny town that can only be reached by boat, float plane, or a hike over the North Cascade mountains. Now it will stay that way. For nearly seven years, a developer threatened to boom Stehekin’s size by almost […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Ludlow Massacre memorialized
In 1914, near Trinidad, Colo., coal miners from the southern coal fields of Colorado tried to organize a union to improve working conditions, enforce the eight-hour work day, have the right to select their own boarding places, doctors and grocery stores, and decrease the high death toll of miners. Their struggle made history on April […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Do we really need the rural West?
Note: this article is accompanied by another article in this issue, “Yes, we need the rural West.” Dan Dagget, the well-known authority on Western livestock grazing and a seemingly mild-mannered guy, lost his cool and fairly screamed at me: “Why don’t all of you go back to the cities back East you came from and […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Yes, we need the rural West
Note: this article accompanies another article in this issue, “Do we really need the rural West?“ Hal Rothman is normally a very cool guy – a history professor fascinated by the culture and economy of his hometown of Las Vegas. But he recently went to a conference about the rural Northern Rockies, and after sitting […]