It was a gold mountain. The gray lodgepoles of the corral sorted it into altitudes: hooves and pasterns, the flaring column of muscle and bone above the knee, the glossy wheatfield of chest, and under a mane of cloud, the great, soft planetary eye. At four, I learned a trick. I would scoop double-handfuls of […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Endless opportunities for solitude
No place on earth has anything quite like the roads of the Great Basin. Maybe the most distinctive recollection of my life 15 years ago at Deep Springs College along the California-Nevada border, was dropping off Westgard Pass into Deep Springs Valley driving a ratty Chevy pickup truck whose sole virtue was a passable sound […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
A 22,000-square-foot castle is not a home
From the living room of my 1,200-square-foot house, I’ve watched a new house going up across the pasture and realized I live in a modern version of a log cabin. My house wasn’t built by hand, and the crew who built it worked together only from eight to five, although a few shared beers afterwards. […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Prison payrolls come with big hooks
I live in Salida: downstream from the Buena Vista Correctional Facility and its associated boot camp, and upstream from Canon City, home of Colorado’s major prison complex, and Florence, which now boasts a federal penitentiary, “the Alcatraz of the Rockies.” And so I’ve noticed, firsthand and in my backyard, that most discussions of prisons ignore […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Heard around the West
Department of What About The Horse? Any person atop a bucking bronc in a Navajo rodeo may soon have to wear safety equipment, reports The Najavo Hopi-Observer. Injuries (to people) have been identified as a problem, so the tribe’s Injury Protection Committee wants to make all rodeo cowboys compete in “rodeo safety vests’ that are […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The Subdivision Massacre: Part II
THE SUBDIVISION MASSACRE: PART II Hot on the heels of his blockbuster video, Subdividing the West: Implications of Population Growth, Colorado State University wildlife professor Richard Knight has released a sequel: Saving the West: Protecting Open Space, starring a county commissioner, a Nature Conservancy staffer, the originator of one of the nation’s most successful open […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The university aimed for the stars and hit Mount Graham
The sins of land-grant universities are usually those of inertia. The land-grants are old-fashioned. They’re politically cautious. They’re financially dependent upon the powers-that-be in their states. Young faculty with new ideas often hold their tongues rather than speak their minds. There’s a culture of countrified politeness among land-grant faculties that can be stultifying. Watching for […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Sound-bite slogans distort a complicated reality
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. In the acrimonious conflict over Mount Graham, middle ground is harder to find than red squirrels. Some opponents like to say the telescopes will drive the squirrel extinct. According to the best scientific knowledge, that’s not exactly true. […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Mount Graham time line
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. About 9000 BC As continental glaciers retreat, conifer forests of the Pinalenos – where 10,720-foot Mount Graham is the highest peak – become isolated from those of the Mogollon Rim and other mountain islands in what is now […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Rural monster homes may not fly
ASPEN, Colo. – To 72-year-old Betty LaMont, her 40-acre piece of land in remote Pitkin County, Colo., is her bank account. The land LaMont’s family homesteaded in the late 1880s lies at 8,000 feet in a grove of aspen, three miles from Thomasville, population 25, and 50 miles from the county seat, Aspen. LaMont says […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Making a mountain into a starbase
The long, bitter battle over Mount Graham
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The administrator
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. “The reality of this project is that it was never a threat to the red squirrel.” Michael Cusanovich, vice president for research and graduate studies at the U of A, oversees a $220 million annual research budget. He’s […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The Apache activist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. “The university, I’d say, is like a tin man. No heart. They don’t have no feeling.” Ola Cassadore Davis grew up on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, about 30 miles from Mount Graham. Her father was a medicine […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The diplomat ecologist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. “I came off the mountain saying probably the best way to save this place is to build an observatory …” Conrad Istock is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the U of A’s College of Arts […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The biogladiator
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. “Biologists who don’t speak out on biological issues become the passive accepters of the loss of biodiversity …” Peter Warshall, an adjunct scientist at the University of Arizona, directed research for an environmental impact statement on Mount Graham […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The petitioning ecologist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. “My objection to the project is based on … the lack of vision about what’s important to preserve in the Southwest.” Mark Fishbein is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Arizona’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology; […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
The straight arrow
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. “The university has no choice except to tilt the rewards system toward faculty and departments that can generate the most money. And that’s bad.” Frank Gregg, head of the BLM under President Jimmy Carter, was a U of […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Colorado’s prison slayer
One man’s quest to unshackle a rural economy
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Poor, rural places are magnets for prisons
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. New prisons aren’t getting built at the scene of the crime. A 1991 federal survey found that 390 prisons were located in rural and small-town settings, housing 44 percent of all state and federal prisoners. More than 200 of those prisons […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Crime is big business, on both sides of thelaw
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. You may have heard the joke: By the year 2000, everyone in the United States will either be in prison or working for one. But prisons and the jobs and spinoff businesses they create are no joke. Prison-construction budgets nationwide topped […]