Two bills awaiting review in the Senate could mean that the National Park Service will recount the history of African-American soldiers in a more complete way. “The Buffalo Soldiers were true pioneers who braved the Western frontier as well as the scourge of racism as they fought for and served our country,” California Congresswoman Jackie […]
Communities
Posted inGoat
The future of the Tongass Forest lies beyond logging, but the timber industry has a hard time letting go
A friend of mine had her heart broken by Southeast Alaska. After studying forestry, she was dispatched to the tiny town of Hoonah in the midst of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass is huge, a 17-million-acre labyrinth of steep fjords, dripping rainforests and salmon-filled rivers. It’s one of the most rugged and beautiful places […]
Posted inWotr
Let us be worthy of their sacrifice
A modest metal building huddles behind a chain-link fence in the industrial quarter of Prescott, Ariz., with only a small sign to identify it: Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew. Hundreds of Prescott residents drive by it every day, and until June 30, it was the home base of 19 members of our community. But that Sunday, […]
Posted inGoat
Who’s trashing the most popular park in Bozeman?
Mary Vant Hull, 85 years old and still kicking — or make that, kicking butt with her frank conversation — is showing me the degradation of Bozeman’s most popular park, on a bluff overlooking the whole city, when a sudden storm comes out of nowhere and blasts us. It’s July 16, but the temperature plummets […]
Posted inWotr
Why do you live in a flood zone?
How to empathize with people who experience devastating loss after fires and floods
Posted inWotr
Finding solace in the river
This is what I have learned: If you have a broken heart, go to the river. But even if you do, eventually you have to come back. As soon as I ease my borrowed kayak into the snowmelt-fed Grande Ronde River, there is no time to think about anything except making it through the next […]
Posted inArticles
Problem-solving in the West
A conversation with Lucy Moore, one of the Southwest’s premier environmental mediators
Posted inRange
Are You Strong? Remembering Randy Udall
The following was previously published at Think Progress. Please also check out a list of links to Randy’s essays for HCN, located below the post. I’ll keep movin’ through the dark with you in my heart my blood brother. —Bruce Springsteen I think we will solve climate change, but to do it we will need […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Time for a Tree House
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. I should admit straightaway that my young daughters never actually asked me to build them a tree house. I came up with the idea myself, got them attached to it, and then pretended that […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
My solar panel is bigger than yours
ARIZONA AND THE NATION It is puzzling, perhaps, that solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. The cost of solar panels continues to drop, and canny utilities have begun to welcome the new power source as a way to stave off building astronomically expensive new power […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Time is running out to get the poster!
We’re in the home stretch of our special referral promotion to enlist friends, family and colleagues to join the HCN community of people serious about the West. More than 125 new readers have stepped up to subscribe and support the work we do here. And their reward? Besides the high-quality journalism we’re known for, they’ll […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Acting the part
The Five Acts of Diego LeónAlex Espinoza304 pages, hardcover: $26.Random House, 2013. Diego León, the protagonist of Alex Espinoza’s second novel, makes his way to the U.S. during the turmoil of the Mexican revolution, hoping to achieve stardom at a time when Hollywood’s major studios each “had a Latin actor under contract.” Espinoza, who was […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Becoming pronghorn: an essay
Remembering wildlife biologist James Yoakum
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
California farm communities suffer tainted drinking water
In California’s agricultural hub, the Central Valley, Latino communities fight for clean water.
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Crossing the border gets deadlier
Between October 2011 and September 2012, 463 people died in the desert after slipping across the U.S.-Mexico border – the most since 2005, when about three times as many entered the country illegally. Today, migrants are eight times more likely to die than a decade ago, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Most […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Investigating an epic war of populations
The Searchers: The Making of an American LegendGlenn Frankel405 pages,hardcover: $28.Bloomsbury, 2013. In a memorable scene in John Ford’s 1956 Western, The Searchers, gun-toting cowboys ride through Utah’s stark red landscape, flanked by war-painted Native Americans. “At the heart of the matter … was land,” writes Glenn Frankel, director of the School of Journalism at […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
The Latest: A New Mexico county is first in the nation to ban fracking
BackstoryThe tiny town of Pavillion, Wyo., sits in the middle of the state’s gas patch, and in the midst of the heated national debate over the risks hydraulic fracturing poses to water quality. Residents complained about well water turning brown after drillers fracked nearby gas wells. In 2011, the EPA released a draft report linking […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
The Rocky Mountain Front blues
Augusta, Montana Nine years ago this May, my wife, Holly, and I bought an old house in Augusta, aiming to live and raise our children in a landscape and a culture — the two are inseparable — that we respect. About 20 miles west of town, the fierce wall of geology known as the Rocky […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Oval Intention: an essay
In the buttery early morning light at Tuolumne Meadows, my 8-year-old son and I contemplate a heap of fabric and jumbled poles. We’d woken early to claim a good campsite, but only now do I recall the difficulty of assembling my father’s ancient tent. He and my daughter are still sleeping, miles away. The instructions […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Latino radio stations connect immigrant communities
“Si, buenas tardes?” Miriam Ceja chirped into the microphone at La Nueva Mix’s studio in Glenwood Springs, Colo. It was 5 p.m., “prime drive time,” on a Wednesday evening in late March. La Nueva Mix is primarily a music station, playing Norteño ballads and other Latin American tunes. But since its debut six years ago, […]