Updated 6/24/13 Two weekends ago I traveled to Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado to do some reporting for a future story on diversity in the parks system. On Monday morning, the 10th, I was waiting in the administration office for my appointment with Cliff Spencer, the park’s black superintendent, to begin. I heard […]
Communities
Posted inGoat
The blue window
“Buy this book and read it on the plane (!)” This was David’s advice to me for our upcoming expedition to Alaska’s Harding Icefield, sent with a link to Glacier Mountaineering: An Illustrated Guide to Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue. I am no stranger to mountains, having grown up in Colorado and spent several seasons […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Shooting yourself in the foot–literally
COLORADO AND THE WEST The western Colorado town of Nucla only has about 730 residents, but its council is eager to tell them how to live — only in the name of freedom, of course, and to protect the Second Amendment. Recently, that meant telling residents that they must own a gun. There were loopholes: […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Wildfire’s silver lining
Boulder County, on Colorado’s urban Front Range, mostly missed the building boom that hit the prairies to its east a decade ago. Any land that wasn’t protected as open space was already developed. (The county has one of the most densely developed wildland-urban interfaces in the country.) What was left was pricey and strictly regulated. […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
A proud, flag-waving liberal
It really annoys me that the American flag has become synonymous with right-wing politics (“Right-wing Migration,” HCN, 5/13/13). I am an avowed “liberal,” as right-wingers derisively call me, yet I grew up with a love for flags. When my parents took me to Denmark as a child to visit the country they grew up in, I immediately […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Birds of a (red and blue) feather flock together
I fail to see the point of “Right-wing Migration” (HCN, 5/13/13). I read it looking for evidence of some illegal, fraudulent, immoral or even unexpected behavior and found none. The only “crime” I could discern was that Republicans voted for Republican candidates. Surprise, surprise. It is perfectly understandable that a resident of Southern California would want to emigrate, […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Book review: Close to Home: Photographs
Close to Home: PhotographsRichard S. Buswell, 80 pages, hardcover: $39.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Montana photographer Richard Buswell has documented the state’s landscapes for more than four decades. In the book Close to Home, he narrows his focus, providing an unsentimental look at objects discarded from pioneer life. Many of the images are […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Choose your political stories wisely
I have read many comments that claim HCN has a liberal bias. “Right-wing Migration” supports that viewpoint because you chose to highlight a place impacted by conservative migration and examined it like it was a negative impact (HCN, 5/13/13). Could HCN also publish a feature article about a place impacted by liberal migration, with a similar takeover […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Don’t ask her to hike
SpectacleSusan Steinberg137 pages, softcover: $14.Graywolf Press, 2013. San Francisco-based writer Susan Steinberg experiments with form and structure as she examines the roles men and women play in her arresting story collection, Spectacle. “The woman,” she writes, “is supposed to know the subtle difference between being a woman and performing one.” An unnamed woman narrates these […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Holt’s last days
Benediction: A NovelKent Haruf258 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Knopf, 2013. Death hovers over Benediction, the latest of novelist Kent Haruf’s books about the eastern Colorado town of Holt. Two earlier works are called Plainsong and Eventide, and the liturgical nuances of the titles seem fitting as this benevolent Colorado novelist bids farewell to a dying world. A […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
More awards for HCN
We’re honored to announce that HCN is the winner of the prestigious 2013 Utne Media Award for Environmental Coverage. “HCN stood out for its consistent reports on important stories we’re not reading anywhere else,” wrote the Utne judges. “From the effects of Twilight-inspired tourism on the Quileute Nation to half-built subdivisions at the foot of […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Stranger in a strange land
My wife and I moved to Sherwood, Ore., in 2007 to be closer to the grandkids in Portland. We attend the local Catholic Church. Much to my chagrin, the parish is almost solely Republican with an anti-abortion core. For many in the church, there is only one question to ask candidates for public office: “Are […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
What about race?
One word that was strangely missing from your excellent article on the conservative politics of northern Idaho was “race” (“Right-wing Migration,” HCN, 5/13/13). I have no hard data on this, but I’d guess that the increasing diversity in Southern California is a major reason a lot of right-wingers from Orange County moved to a mostly […]
Posted inWotr
Two blocks from the Mexican border
Every weekend at daybreak, the neighborhood dogs begin to bark. I open my blinds to see what’s up, and it’s almost always the same: a Mexican teenager in a dark hoodie running down the abandoned railroad track followed by several others just like him, spaced every few minutes. Sometimes they’re barefoot. They disappear into a […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Most likely to secede
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. It is less than 90 miles, as the raven flies, from the Ranting Hill to Rough and Ready, California, a western Sierra foothills town that holds special meaning for a reclusive curmudgeon like me. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Beavers battle oil and gas spills
THE WEST It takes a bold person to tinker with Smokey Bear, the U.S. Forest Service icon who proclaims, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” Messing with the paunchy blue-jeaned bear and his strong message might just earn you a cease and desist letter, plus a threat of jail time and fines. That happened to […]
Posted inGoat
Mining for dark matter in Lead, South Dakota
Updated 6/17/13 In the 1870s, gold fever struck South Dakota’s Black Hills. Mining camps like the infamous Deadwood sprung from the mud, supporting bustling trade in opium and liquor. The gold seams went deep, and hundreds of miners and their families settled into a stable and prosperous living in the nearby, larger town of Lead […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
A Utah realtor’s quest to sell a ghost town
Woodside, Utah Mike Metzger strides through a row of cracked wooden headstones decorated with faded plastic flowers. The 35-year-old wears a button-down shirt and gray pants. He has lightly-gelled short dark hair and a trim goatee. “These graves are silent now,” he says, staring wistfully at the camcorder. “But if they could speak, the stories […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Listening to the secret heart: a review of The Last Shepherd
The Last ShepherdMartin Etchart203 pages, softcover: $22.University of Nevada Press, 2012. Arizona author Martin Etchart’s compelling second novel takes readers to the heart of a Basque family, originally from the French Pyrenees, that has been whittled down to two: a father and a son. Mathieu Etcheberri, the son of Basque shepherds who built a hardscrabble […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Sippings of memory: a review of “100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do”
100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother DisappearedKim Stafford202 pages, softcover: $16.95.Trinity University Press, 2012. One of the happy consequences of reading Kim Stafford is that he makes you want to become a better person. The Portland-based author of 12 books of poetry and prose writes with a quiet gentleness, intimacy and kindness. […]