Conversation with Jon Proudstar about the return of his comic book series, ‘Tribal Force.’
Communities
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Tracking America’s ice-age pioneers
In the Shadow of the Sabertooth: A Renegade Naturalist Considers Global Warming, the First Americans and the Terrible Beasts of the PleistoceneDouglas Peacock200 pages, paperback: $15.AK Press/ Counterpunch, 2013. Doug Peacock, author of Grizzly Years and Walking It Off, once walked point as a polar bear guard on an Arctic expedition, armed with only a […]
Posted inArticles
A city beyond the fog and under one roof
Photographs of isolation and community in Whittier, Alaska.
Posted inWotr
A rock star was my teacher
Re-encountering a science nut who instilled in me a love of wilderness.
Posted inWotr
I admit it: I’m an environmental hypocrite
Yup, I hang my clothes to dry – right after I burn fossil fuels to get them clean.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Wilderness therapy redefines itself
But the irresponsible caregivers and tragedies of the past prove hard to shake.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
An ode to snow
Laura Pritchett on the joy of snow.
Posted inGoat
Closed roads remind Silverton and the West of our dependence on transportation
Since Jan. 12, rocks have been raining down on Highway 550 on the north side of Red Mountain Pass in southwestern Colorado. Cold nights and warm days created a freeze/thaw cycle that pried loose a huge chunk of the rocky mountainside, which then broke into thousands of boulders. In order to stabilize the rocks to […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: The Great Basin Sea Monster
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Last Saturday around noon I was still feeling desperate for more alone time when my daughters Hannah (age 10) and Caroline (age 7) asked if I was finally ready to play with them. I […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
A new cowboy reality show, city dwellers encounter peregrine falcons and a snowboarder harasses a moose
THE WESTWatch out, ranching families, a “docu-reality” television company wants to cast you in a new series, but only if your personalities can be described as “dynamic, engaging and uninhibited.” Tim Marema, whose blog, AgricultureProud, helped spread the word, found much of the producers’ concept laughable, especially the requirement that “All members of the family […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
HCN welcomes new interns
We’re delighted that stellar intern Krista Langlois is staying for another six months as our latest editorial fellow. And two new interns have arrived for a half-year of journalism boot camp. Christi Turner isn’t just thrilled to be out West – she’s pleased to be back in the United States. A Rhode Island native who […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Review: A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska
A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in AlaskaSergei Kan, 288 pages, hardcover: $39.95, University of Oklahoma Press, 2013 In A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska, ethnologist Sergei Kan brings 137 century-old images to light. Taken between 1890 and 1920 by amateur photographer Vincent Soboleff, they portray Tlingit […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Rural Americans have inferior Internet access
Does it matter that broadband quality varies so widely?
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Storm and stress on the frontier
Crossing PurgatoryGary Schanbacher292 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Pegasus Books, 2013. Thompson Grey abandons his Indiana farm in 1858 and joins a caravan of pioneers trekking west along the Santa Fe Trail in Gary Schanbacher’s accomplished new novel. Crossing Purgatory is a moral Western that questions what any decent human being owes another amid the harsh conditions of […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
This is a man’s world
Ballistics: A NovelD.W. Wilson400 pages, hardcover: $26.Bloomsbury, 2013. Nestled in British Columbia’s remote Kootenay Valley, the town of Invermere is a place where “sons take after their dads and teenagers in lift-kit trucks catch air off train tracks … burn shipping flats at the gravel pits and slurp homebrew that swims with wood ether.” Here, […]
Posted inArticles
KDNK Radio speaks with HCN reporter Kevin Taylor
The number of community gardens in the U.S. has been growing in recent years as more people take an interest in producing at least some of their own food. Yet in some western communities, a new and radical approach to communal agriculture is taking root: the edible forest garden. KDNK Radio’s Nelson Harvey spoke with […]
Posted inWotr
Got a local issue? Here’s how to organize
How a small group of people committed to academic freedom organized to turn around a school district.
Posted inGoat
Preserving ancient art in land marked for solar energy development
Like a great eye of reflective silicon, the largest utility-scale power plant in the United States is rapidly materializing in the Mojave Desert. According to company officials, when fully complete, the BrightSource Ivanpah Solar Power Facility will come on line early this year, supplying nearly 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes during […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Oilfield workers on Facebook, dynamite in a sperm whale, and more.
NORTH DAKOTA, MONTANAThere’s now a brilliant, low-cost way to start a newspaper smack in the middle of nowhere: Just open up a Facebook page or two, and share what you know and what you’d like to know more about. Ask local readers to pitch in with Smartphone photos and tips, and voilà! You’re in business, […]
Posted inWotr
An Iraq War veteran fights for public lands
Finding much-needed solace in Colorado’s Browns Canyon and hoping it becomes a national monument.