Matt Clow, 30, was fascinated by whirling disease. As a Montana State University graduate student, he wanted to find out why young Arctic grayling and cutthroat trout fall prey to the disease that is spreading throughout the West’s waters. In June 1998, Matt Clow drowned after his boat capsized on a lake near Dillon, Mont. […]
Communities
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Silverton Avalanche School
Learn everything you need to know about avalanches, snow safety and rescue at the Silverton Avalanche School in Silverton, Colo. Two levels of training are available, both with field sessions, over three weekends in January and February. Call the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office at 970/387-5531 (only between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
New resort in the San Juans?
Back in the 1980s, Pagosa Springs, Colo., resident Betty Feazel helped lead a successful campaign to stop a proposed ski area in the rugged, undeveloped San Juan River’s East Fork Valley. But now, says the award-winning activist, who has lived in the area for 77 years, the fight may be starting all over again. Back […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Gracias
-I was like everybody else,” says photographer Celia Roberts. “I’d go to the grocery store and get some broccoli and not think, “Might that last hand that touched it be the one that picked it?” “””Lest we also forget, Roberts is here to remind us. “Gracias,” her bilingual, year 2000 calendar, illuminates the lives of […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Treasure Valley’s housing not so golden
Despite a strong economy and low interest rates, the nearly 20,000 Latinos in southwest Idaho have a hard time finding affordable housing. According to Wayne Hoffman, a reporter at the Idaho Press-Tribune, Latinos in Treasure Valley are 2.5 times more likely to be denied conventional home mortgages and home improvement loans than whites. Hoffman’s report, […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
An upscale development divides a town
DONNELLY, Idaho – Dave Dewey used to lead a peaceful life in this bucolic town. The 28-year-old Valley County resident lived a typical Joe Citizen existence, working as a concrete contractor, raising a family, and serving on the county planning and zoning commission. Then came WestRock. Touted as a world-class resort plan, the sleek “WestRock […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
All you can eat at Pueblito del Paiz
Ted Medina slams down a pan of, oh God, what is it? A pig’s head. Snout, eyes and yellowish toasted ears bubbling like Picasso’s own dinner. “You name it, it’s all good!” says Ted, stocky, aproned and grinning from under a cap emblazoned Denver Fire Department. “Here, you nibble on this bit here. It’s good!” […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Hard times in rural Idaho
Some portions of rural Idaho that suffered economically 15 years ago are doing well today. Formerly sleepy spots like the Teton Valley are faced with exploding populations, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Spokane, Wash., are growing together along a corridor of development. But not all of Idaho is booming. The state’s third Profile of Rural […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Proulx shoots holes in mythic Wyoming
You won’t find a loving couple or a child nurturing a 4-H animal in Annie Proulx’s collection of short stories set in rural Wyoming. Her briskly selling Close Range: Wyoming Stories is populated mostly by lowlifes and losers who cobble together a living in a state that is synonymous these days with limited economic opportunities. […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Coming home to the country
EKALAKA, Mont. – We called it the Mother Tree: a mature ponderosa pine on the crest of a small hill, with an acre or so of seedlings and saplings draping the hill’s leeward side, a mini-forest in the making that was the product of scores of pinecones shed by that lone adult. We drove past […]
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
Nevada names
JARBIDGE (Elko). A Nevada post office, established March 5, 1910, and town (the most isolated mining camp in the state) … According to Jarbidge legend, the name … comes from a Shoshone Indian word Jahabich, meaning “devil,” or from Tswhawbitts, the name of a mythical crater-dwelling giant who roamed the Jarbidge Canyon for many years. […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Home Free
With the number of new land trusts topping 1,200 in this country, it’s not surprising that even the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States has come on board. Its Wildlife Land Trust has protected 46,391 acres in 18 states, including recent additions of 500 acres in northern California and 1,280 acres in southwest […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Living in the outdoors
Wilderness Guide, by Mark Harvey, Simon and Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020; paper, illustrated, $15. This starting-from-scratch revision of The National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Guide will tell you what to wear, how to navigate, and how to get across streams and scree fields in the backcountry. It will give […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
A man to match our mountains
The West lost a legendary mountaineer and outdoor educator Oct. 6. Paul Petzoldt, founder of the National Outdoor Leadership Training School (NOLS) and Wilderness Education Association (WEA), died at 91. “Paul was a tireless visionary,” said Jeff Liddle, former director of WEA. “He was one of the first people to draw a line in the […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Harsh words from inside the Beltway
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another article, “Keeping ’em down on the High Plains.” On Oct. 6, 1999, Wyoming got another scolding from the outside. After attending a University of Wyoming-sponsored conference titled “Leadership and the Future of Wyoming,” Washington Post columnist David Broder chided […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Bones of Contention
For reasons still debated among scientists today, Anasazi culture in the Southwest had collapsed by 1300, creating what is known to academics as “The Great Abandonment.” According to Navajo oral histories, the Anasazi were dispersed by a whirlwind because they had abandoned the ways of their ancestors. Whatever the causes, the eastern part of […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
Developer told to scale back
Developer Jim Mehen hoped to build a golf course and gated community of 300 luxury homes on his 407 acres near Flagstaff, Ariz. He’d revised his plans repeatedly in the past two years to meet county concerns. But misgivings about development in the volcanic caldera and wetland remained, and opposition to the project gathered momentum. […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
A bittersweet victory in the New West
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – It is over. And, we have won. The Dry Lake ephemeral wetland and volcano crater outside Flagstaff, is safe from a golf course and million-dollar home development. The county supervisors close their thick notebooks. For a long instant, the big auditorium is silent. Then it is as though 200 people let out […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
All our backs are a bit wet
RIO RICO, Ariz. – While driving to the supermarket, I spotted a border-crosser trudging north. He clearly was an illegal Mexican National. He looked weary, but I resisted an impulse to ask if he needed help. On my way home, I saw the man slumped alongside an unmarked Ford Taurus, nabbed by a plainclothes police […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
An Arizona mayor condemns the New West’s thirst for servants
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another article,”Battered borderlands.” Ray Borane, mayor of Douglas, Ariz., from a letter to the Aspen Daily News, dated July 8, 1999: “The U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended and expelled from our area more than 200,000 illegal aliens since the beginning […]