Many rural people hope that new industries such as tourism will offset the losses when timber and mining industries pull out of an area. Research conducted by the University of Idaho’s College of Agriculture found that for at least that one small county, recreation is not bringing in enough money to keep suffering economies afloat. […]
Communities
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Greens not welcome in Escalante
ESCALANTE, Utah – Heavy machinery rolled into town the week of April 12. Construction was imminent on the $7.5 million New Wide Hollow Reservoir that would provide water for a couple dozen ranchers in this rural southern Utah town. Then, on April 15, under pressure from environmentalists who say the reservoir would harm the Escalante […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Walking the path between light and dark
Good guys. Bad guys. It used to be pretty clear which side was which. When I was a kid back in the straight-arrow ’50s, I knew that the Lone Ranger wore the white hat. He was on the side of justice, law and order. In the topsy-turvy ’60s, as I learned how the West was […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
My beautiful ranchette
My name is Susan; I live on a ranchette. In the growth-pained West, this is as serious a confession as alcoholism or cruelty to animals. A year and a half ago, I picked up my local newspaper in Bozeman, Mont., and there under the headline TRACKING SPRAWL was an aerial photo of the Bridger Mountain […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
The East Rosebud Trip
Far past road signs local paranoia claimed would signal the Russians’ attack from Montana (numbers I’d thought were Highway Department codes mass produced in Chicago maybe to identify routes and mileage, lo and behold turned out to be signals for the New World Order’s global hegemony – so clutch your rifle); past all that the […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
In Montana: The view from the ranchette
Montana has its own special pathologies. But the one it shares most visibly with the Mountain West in general features a peculiar symptom – furtive glances at the horizon with the expectation of seeing silhouetted hordes there, as in a Western movie, except that these hordes are driving Land Rovers and eating sushi. There’s a […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Enough nature writing already!
In a column by Anne Lamott in the online magazine “Salon,” she made the following proposal: “Rather than make perfectly good writers crank out new books every few years because they need income and are otherwise unemployable, what if we gave them subsidies not to write any more books, like they give to tobacco growers?” […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Why I’m a poor writer
For almost a month now I’ve been trying to collect $55 that a national environmental magazine owes me for a 400-word book review. That’s two 20s, a 10, and a five. Three polite e-mails have yielded the following one response: “Thanks for reminding me. I’ll look into it.” This proves my first rule about free-lance […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
When you’re alone on the open road
During the winter, I live in the southeastern corner of Wyoming, in the capital city of Cheyenne. In summer, and in any weather when the roads are passable, I spend as much time as I can on my ranch in the southwestern corner of South Dakota. My two homes are about 280 miles apart, but […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Nostalgic for the Pleistocene
“We are space-needing, wild-country Pleistocene beings, trapped in overdense numbers in devastated, simplified ecosystems.” – Paul Shepard (1925-1996) How’s this for a statement of opinion: In this century and a whole lot of others, no other thinker has been anywhere near so visionary, prophetic, revolutionary and important as Paul Shepard. Yet, if you know about […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Nothing is everything
THE SPACE CLOSEST TO OUR BODIES Imagine some tan grass and sage, monoliths and blow outs, flatness the feet cannot believe, distance the eye laughs at as it fumbles blindly with the ends of all time. Imagine everything here moves (even the cactus will come close to a sleeping man and the beetle will tunnel […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Saint Contrary: John Wesley Powell
If the American West were to adopt a secular, flawed, feet-of-clay patron saint, John Wesley Powell, whose March 24th birthday just passed, would be the man. Powell, who was born in 1834 and died in 1902, epitomized grit and courage, qualities the West likes to honor. He lost an arm at Shiloh commanding a battery […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Outdoor schools get squeezed
Two outdoor schools in Summit County, Colo., are feeling the pinch of development in their high country domains. For the past 20 years, Keystone Science School has used the outdoors as a teaching tool. But the school’s backcountry assets are threatened by Keystone Ski Area’s real estate expansion on the fringes of the school’s 23-acre […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Bison ranch in the balance
A bison ranch that sits in the shadow of the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado could be sold to developers this year if The Nature Conservancy doesn’t come through. Rocky Mountain Bison Inc. has promised to sell its 100,000 acres to the nonprofit Conservancy if the group can raise the purchase price […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Cantankerous and contradictory: Remembering Ed Abbey
Edward Abbey changed my life. He saved me from becoming a Republican. Twenty-five years after a friend of my father’s handed me a worn-out copy of Desert Solitaire and a decade after his death, Ed Abbey is, to me, an honest hero in a time and a world where we don’t allow heroes. He’d throw […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Mormons on the land
-We cannot return to Eden. We know too much and we care too little about the complexities of our collective past. But perhaps we can find our way toward a new genesis, a wiser relationship toward Creation that is founded on the sacred principles of love and respect and empathy.” * Terry Tempest Williams, New […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Just go away
-So what’s the American Dream for the people out here?” I asked. “To be left alone,” Baker replied. “Just to be left alone?” I asked. “But that’s not possible, is it?” “Nope,” Baker said. “How do they react when they find it’s not possible?” I asked. “They get really mad,” and (she) broke up laughing. […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Green versus gold
California sometimes seems to play in its own league, its affairs completely separate from the rest of the West. But the lively new collection, Green Versus Gold: Sources in California’s Environmental History, shows how universal California’s lessons are. Editor Carolyn Merchant dips into every phase of California’s history, from before Europeans arrived, through Spanish colonization, […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Church picks and chooses to create a belief system
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The theology of the Church Universal and Triumphant is a mixed bag of Christianity, Buddhism, New Age mysticism and astrology. Add in beings called Ascended Masters, who speak through Elizabeth Clare Prophet, angels and “elementals,” who embody earth, fire, water and wind. Then there […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
On the Web, church chats up a storm
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If you want a good look at the internal debate over the Church Universal and Triumphant’s new direction, go to cyberspace, where a pair of Web sites are dedicated to airing viewpoints pro and con. People speculate about the sex life of CUT guru […]