On a recent Sunday morning, a dozen young boys splashed gleefully in an alpine stream in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Wearing rubber boots and wielding fine-meshed nets, they reached into the icy water, rolled rocks aside, and scooped up the flotsam released into the current. Then they dumped the contents into plastic trays held […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
En-lightning statistics
Over two days in mid-July, an elderly Colorado woman, 10 farmworkers and three Montana hikers were hit by lightning — and lived to tell about it. Lightning fatalities in the U.S. have decreased by 75 percent since 1968, partly because of better medical access, more education and safer buildings, but largely because fewer Americans farm […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Fracking fashionistas
Oil and gas workers once had few options for on-the-job fashion: standard street wear or heavy-duty firefighting gear. Flame-retardant clothing was bulky, expensive and hot, but the alternative — jeans and T-shirts — proved dangerous in environments where explosions and fires can be all in a day’s work. In 2010, the Occupational Safety and Health […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Ghost of a chance
We Live in WaterJess Walter192 pages, softcover: $14.99.Harper Perennial, 2013. In 13 sharp, witty stories, Spokane’s Jess Walter captures the gritty, quirky and heartbreaking lives of a variety of Pacific Northwesterners. Walter convincingly inhabits each character he creates, from a hungry meth addict wheeling an enormous TV toward a hoped-for pawnshop payout to a blue-collar […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Flume fever: a monument to gold mining history is reconstructed
A hanging flume, attached to a canyon wall, captures the imagination of locals and heritage tourists alike.
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Reading to maturity
Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and MisbehaviorBrandon R. Schrand221 pages, softcover:$16.95. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Brandon R. Schrand’s second book, Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior, retraces the Idaho author’s life through his obsessive love of literature. Each personal essay is paired with notes about a book that influenced […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Smokey the Bear gets cuddly
THE WESTTwenty-five years ago, river guides who’d mastered the art of steering boats through the Grand Canyon decided to start a magazine. It would celebrate the history of the ancient place and its band of young Colorado River runners, reveling in the job’s excitement and occasional tedium and revealing the sometimes-deadly hazards of ferrying tourists […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Arid lands bibliopedestrianism
I’ll admit that those of us who live in remote desert places tend to be idiosyncratic, though it is unclear to me whether the weird are attracted to the wild, dry country or if we are instead sculpted by it. And when you live in relative isolation—and in a physical environment that conspires with that […]
Posted inGoat
Seven days to fund an anthology of Ed Quillen’s wise, curmudgeonly writing
Want to help ensure that the West will never forget one of its wisest and most unique voices, writer Ed Quillen? Consider chipping into this Kickstarter project to anthologize his work. Ed died last year on June 3, at his home in Salida, Colo. “For nearly 30 years, Ed had written about the region’s communities […]
Posted inGoat
Are the West’s energy fields the last bastion of upward mobility?
Imagine, for a moment, a child born in Gallup or Tohatchi or Church Rock, NM. We’ll call him Jonny Gallup. He’s an average, healthy kid, but life’s not easy. His mom works at a mini-mart gas station, and his father does odd jobs but has a tough time finding anything stable. Combined, they usually make […]
Posted inGoat
Drones touch down in the American West
Once reserved for American military use in places like Pakistan, unmanned aerial vehicles — better known as drones — are becoming increasingly common here at home, as our pro-drone editor Jonathan Thompson wrote about earlier this year. But even as public concern mounts over the Obama administration’s use of the stealthy aircraft, everyone from scientific […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Pilgrim at Shit Creek
A mother comes to terms with her son’s childhood in the urban environment.
Posted inWotr
My life without a dog
A newspaperman wonders if he’s the only person around without a canine friend.
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
A half-empty future
I agree with the author’s pessimism (“The Rocky Mountain Front blues,” HCN, 6/24/13). Improvements in energy efficiency alone aren’t enough. What can help is to leave the oil, gas and coal in the ground and to permanently protect the associated lands from development. However, I wonder if any form of “permanent protection” will be able […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Are you strong? Remembering Randy Udall
I think we will find a solution to climate change, but we will need each other to make it happen. Over the years, the environmental community has become fractured on the issue — arguing over the best approach, becoming frustrated and critical. And all this is healthy, but only if seen as part of a […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Frontier Justice: A review of Little Century
Little CenturyAnna Keesey336 pages, paperback:$16.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. When Esther Chambers moves to central Oregon from Chicago in 1896, she finds herself caught in a range war between cattle ranchers and sheepherders. Anna Keesey’s elegant debut novel, Little Century, resurrects the complex West of those early days, in prose that captures the rhythms and […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Is the Rainbow Gathering a natural disaster?
THE WEST Sizzling, blistering, brutal: Whatever adjective you use to describe the West’s recent heat wave, it’s not strong enough. Normally cool places like Portland and Seattle hit the 90s. Phoenix soared above 104 every day in June, reaching 119 once, and a few nights the low was a baking 91 degrees. Rattlesnakes huddled in […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Migrant mother retold: A review of Mary Coin
Mary CoinMarisa Silver322 pages, hardcover: $26.95.Blue Rider Press, 2013. Halfway through Marisa Silver’s crystalline new novel, Mary Coin, two women’s lives converge near a frost-blighted field of peas in Depression-era California. Vera Dare, a government photographer, aims her camera at a rumpled migrant family. Her thoughts drift to her own children: two young boys sent […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Report from the summer HCN board meeting
High Country News‘ board of directors met in our hometown of Paonia, Colo. at the end of May, to assess the nonprofit’s health, discuss our prospects, and savor the Western Slope’s beauty. The news was good: HCN continues to expand its reach — our website, hcn.org, saw one-third more visitors in the first quarter of […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
You can’t have your gas and burn it, too
Many Americans are not enthusiastic about drilling in rural areas like the Rocky Mountain Front (“The Rocky Mountain Front blues,” HCN, 6/24/13). Unfortunately, we are also not happy with the cost of energy and our dependence on politically unstable areas such as the Middle East. We want solar power and wind generators, but those also […]