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 […]
Communities
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 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 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, […]
Posted inGoat
Death in the desert
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 […]
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
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 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, […]