“The Tree Coroners,” by HCN contributing editor Cally Carswell, just received one of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 2013-2014 Awards for Reporting on the Environment. The Dec. 9, 2013, feature story took second place in the category “Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market.” Congrats, Cally! VisitorsSo many readers pass through Paonia, Colorado, […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
How to publish a newspaper in the midst of wildfire
Rural weekly newspapers remain vital to their communities, and as a publisher-editor, it’s my job to keep readers informed about and connected around the things that are important to them. So how do you respond when nearly every means of doing that job is wiped out in one superheated burst of flame? In mid-July, what […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Metamorphosis in Winnemucca
The Days Of Anna MadrigalArmistead Maupin288 pages, hardcover:$26.99. Harper Collins, 2014. California author Armistead Maupin has returned with the ninth and final volume in his much-loved Tales of the City series. Maupin, who has long refused to be pigeonholed as a “gay writer,” writes about contemporary San Francisco and the love lives of both gays […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Reinventing the Sundance Kid
Sundance: A NovelDavid Fuller352 pages, hardcover: $27.95.Riverhead, 2014. What if an Old West legend left the outlaw life behind to embark on a mission to find his lost love? David Fuller’s second novel recasts the fate of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known to history and movie fans as the Sundance Kid, who allegedly perished along […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
What the West will feel like in 2100
Scenarios for how our cities will change with the climate.
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Polite excuses
After reading Quinn Read’s article “The Virtues of Old-School Car Camping” (HCN, 7/21/14), I was struck with a wonderful moment of reminiscing. It took me back to the days of family car camping in the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona and the Rockies in Colorado. We, like Quinn, would struggle to fall asleep before Dad’s snoring […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Summer swimming in a Washington lake
When I was a kid, I swam all summer in backyard pools and at the city park, lessons in the morning, wildness all afternoon. My bare feet grew calluses, my hair turned brittle green, my shoulders got broad, my Lycra suits disintegrated. And then I left home. I’ve lived in this mountain town for a […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The bomb builders’ wives
The Wives of Los AlamosTaraShea Nesbit233 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury, 2014. In her deft debut novel, Colorado writer TaraShea Nesbit imagines the lives of the wives of the men who were stationed in New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, working on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Nesbit writes in the collective voice of the […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The Tea Party loses one in Colorado
John Pennington lost his primary election bid for sheriff of Mesa County, here in western Colorado, last month. I don’t know why he lost to Steve King, a former Republican state legislator who then canceled his own campaign due to a scandal, leaving the general election race wide-open for several new candidates. But I do […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
A once nomadic firefighter decides to stay put
There’s a wildfire burning three miles from my house. Sparked by lightning, the column of smoke went nuclear yesterday, pushing flame through deadfall on the rugged shoulder of Chief Joseph Mountain in northwestern Oregon. This is a mountain we climb and ski and hike, the place where, with a glance, we can see the elevation […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
California water waster fines and condoms from conservationists.
COLORADOYou could almost hear the teeth gnashing in Aspen. A well-connected man, Robert K. Steel, chairman of the board of the Aspen Institute, exploited a loophole in county regulations so that his daughter could be married in remote splendor – in a “pristine sub-alpine meadow on the backside of Aspen Mountain at 10,000 in elevation,” […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Lay of the land
How to Read the American West: A Field GuideWilliam Wyckoff384 pages, paperback: $44.95.University of Washington Press, 2014. Too hefty to be carried in a hip pocket or even a daypack, William Wyckoff’s How To Read The American West is a field guide unlike any other, with a focus on patterns, variations and the distribution of […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
New kids in town
Well, they’re not exactly kids, but HCN is pleased to welcome two new interns to our Paonia, Colorado, office for six months of journalism boot camp. And we’re also delighted that Krista Langlois, our extraordinary editorial fellow, is staying for another six months. Growing up in Toronto, new editorial intern Sarah Tory devoured books on […]
Posted inGoat
Was the fatal thunderstorm in California a climate phenomenon?
The weather of Venice Beach, California, where I live, is for the most part stable, and almost always predictable. No sudden squalls appear out of the southwest to chase skateboarders off their concrete ramps; never do we hear the civil-defense sirens warning of an approaching tornado. Living here, swimming and surfing at the beach a […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
The virtues of old-school car camping
Backwoods adventure isn’t the only way to develop an affinity for the outdoors.
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
Gear companies go local
A new crop of manufacturers try to succeed without selling out.
Posted inWotr
Our reliance on drones to patrol the borders
When I think of Canada, I picture caribou herds, universal healthcare and the occasional hockey brawl. Officials at our Department of Homeland Security, however, seem to think the neighbors up North pose a serious security threat. After all, the department has spent the last five years quietly building a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles — […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
An artist’s road to redemption
The PainterPeter Heller288 pages, hardcover:$24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. If it’s possible to paint in words alone, to create a wildly colorful story of grief in sentences layered like one of van Gogh’s swirling night scenes, Colorado author Peter Heller accomplishes it in his second novel, The Painter, narrated by artist Jim Stegner. A fly fisherman […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
Photos of Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats: Two Decades of Photography by Peter Vincent Peter Vincent with essays by Peter de Lory, Philip Linhares, Tom Fritz and others, 272 pages, hardcover: $85. Stance & Speed. 2013. “Salt fever”: That’s what drives thousands of people each year to gather with their hotrods, cars and motorcycles on the Utah-Nevada border, […]