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 […]
Communities
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 […]
Posted inGoat
Buffalo Soldier history could get a boost in national parks
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 […]
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 […]