Photographer Rebecca Drobis looks for universal images of youth on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.
Communities
Touring Hopi via a 10K running race at dawn
I run. And I weep. My tears may come from the fact that it’s 6 a.m., or perhaps from the burning in legs and lungs as I try to hold the pace of the leaders. But I’m pretty sure my sobs come from a deep joy inspired by the way the rising sun lights up […]
Marginalia: an essay
On a trek across the Arctic, a writer’s map becomes a record of the journey.
Check those attics: An archivist’s plea for your old newspapers
Halloween night in the windy railroad town of Livingston, Mont.: a Burlington Northern train, consisting of just three locomotives, hisses from the yard and begins the long, slow climb toward Bozeman. Nobody is onboard but a hobo. The engines crest the pass, pick up speed on the downgrade, hit 80 mph and jump the tracks. […]
My 15 years with that flaming guy
The truth is Burning Man is middle-aged, but still more fun than you can dream of.
A California essayist on American optimism and how landscape shapes our imaginations
An interview with Richard Rodriguez.
Reconciling family narrative with textbook history in Montana’s Bighorn Valley
An essay by Joe Wilkins.
Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason’s four-year road trip
Bringing poetry to an entire state, one county at a time.
True Believers would destroy the Indian health system
Congress always works on two tracks. The first rail is legislation that gives the government authority to spend money. The second rail is one that actually appropriates the funds. It’s that second law that dictates how the government can spend dollars for the Indian Health Service (or any other program) under parameters set by law. […]
The renegade cartographer
Dave Imus challenges the murkiness of modern mapmaking.
A roadside shrine, a beacon of faith
Seeking out a roadside shrine that touched this writer decades ago.
Mountain goats, cats, glampers — that’s short for glamorous campers — and more
What have you heard?
Reconstructing a volatile past
Son of a Gun: A Memoir Justin St. Germain 256 pages, hardcover: $26. Random House, 2013. Murdered in her trailer just days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sensationalized on TV news, labeled a “black widow” by a marshal — Justin St. Germain’s mother was judged for her lifestyle both in life and in death. […]
See you in October
As we do four times a year, High Country News is skipping an issue. We’ll be back in your mailbox around Oct. 14. In the meantime, keep up with us at hcn.org, and eat as many homegrown tomatoes as you can; they won’t last forever. Summer visitors Longtime subscriber Brian Jatlin came by our Paonia, […]
The reading season
After the summer’s whirl of activity, after the mountains have been hiked and the rivers have been run and the garden has been weeded for what we hope to God is the final round, it’s a good time to kick back with a book. Fall invites a slower pace, gives us lazy afternoons by the […]
The ‘wrong kind of Indians’
Cowboys and East IndiansNina McConigley195 pages, softcover: $15.95.FiveChapters Books, 2013. In her captivating debut story collection, Casper-raised author Nina McConigley examines with wit and empathy what it means to be “the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming.” Although prejudice and ignorance surface, there are few bad guys in this game of cowboys and Indians, […]
What do you know?
Author Percival Everett defies categories and generalizations.
A puzzle of memory and vision
Boneland: Linked StoriesNance Van Winckel196 pages, softcover: $16.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Loss — real and potential — casts a shadow over the lives of the characters in Washington writer Nance Van Winckel’s poignant, deeply interconnected short stories. At the center of the collection is Lynette, who seems as trouble-prone as she is resilient. In […]
Desert solitude, desert community
Brother and the DancerKeenan Norris266 pages, softcover:$15.Heyday Books, 2013. Gang wars, drive-by shootings, drug sales, poverty — San Bernardino County was, as Keenan Norris explains in his debut novel, Brother and the Dancer, “one of the most violent places in America” at the millennium. The area surrounding his hometown of Highland, Calif., he notes ruefully, […]
