“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 […]
Communities
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
Selling off the Promised Land
CORWIN SPRINGS, Mont. – The big trouble started 10 years ago, when federal agents arrested Vernon Hamilton for possession of illegally purchased sniper rifles in Spokane, Wash. There was more. Hamilton was carrying $130,000 worth of gold, cash and crates of ammunition, along with an elaborate false identity he had stolen from a California man […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
A biography of Prophet’s most recent life
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Guru Ma’s got troubles. Lots of them. At the age of 59, she has both a preschool child and Alzheimer’s disease. All four of her adult children have turned their back on the Church Universal and Triumphant, the institution she spent almost 40 years […]
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 […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Clearcut the neighborhood
Whoever said irony is wasted on the West never met Tom Clyde. Clyde spent 17 traumatic years practicing law in Park City, Utah. In 1984, he packed his belongings into his Volkswagen bus and moved to a cabin on his family’s ranch 20 miles away. From this safe distance, he has been providing the locals […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Giving voice to a Lakota history
It is hard to convey just how good this book is; it’s possibly the best book yet about the famous battle of the Little Bighorn. In Lakota Noon, Gregory F. Michno has gathered approximately 60 Indian narratives and produced a detailed reconstruction of the fighting. Individual warriors tell their stories through a chronological timeline of […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Does soccer tread on open space?
When a Washington state soccer association bought a 112-acre farm for its new soccer field recently, it started a bitter match over open space. The land, in the Sammamish Valley east of Seattle, is protected under King County’s 20-year-old farmland preservation program, and critics say a soccer field doesn’t measure up. “This soccer group thinks […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Cows conquer condos
A 32,000-acre ranch will remain free of subdivisions – no small feat for property that straddles the border between Moab, Utah, and Grand Junction, Colo., an area being developed at a rate that’s twice the national average. The landowner, who has asked to remain anonymous, has been working since 1979 with a land trust in […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Ghost town hangs on
SOUTHERN CROSS, Mont. – The handful of locals in this Montana ghost town are haunted by the specter of eviction. Protected by a 1998 court injunction, homeowners earned borrowed time to stay put. But they still face a court challenge from the development company that owns the land beneath their homes. About 20 people own […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Tucson draws a line on sprawl
TUCSON, Ariz. – A crowd of several hundred people burst into applause at a public meeting here, as the Pima County Board of Supervisors killed a developer’s plan to turn a cattle ranch into 6,100 homes, two golf courses, a hotel, shopping areas and an airstrip. The Jan. 12 vote, the first denial of a […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Riding the rails in Colorado
Rails may be the most cost- and energy-efficient way to move commodities across our landscape, but they’re also a shrinking asset; America’s major railroads abandon about 3,200 miles of track every year. How should state and local governments, and community activists, respond when a railroad files to abandon a line? Colorado, where rail mileage has […]